JERUSALEM — The Israeli military struck targets in the Gaza Strip early Friday, pushing the region toward a wider conflagration after a day of rocket fire along the country’s northern and southern borders following two days of unrest at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. Gaza militants quickly fired off a new barrage of rockets, setting off air raid sirens across southern Israel.
The Israeli airstrikes set off at least four loud explosions in Gaza. The Israeli military said it struck a pair of tunnels and two weapons-manufacturing sites.
The sound of outgoing rocket fire could be heard in Gaza.
It was the latest signs of rising tensions during a sensitive holiday period. Similar fighting in 2021 led to an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.
The airstrikes came after militants in Lebanon fired a heavy barrage of rockets at Israel earlier in the day, forcing people across Israel’s northern frontier into bomb shelters, wounding at least two people. In Gaza, militants also fired rockets toward Israel.
Israeli military officials said the rocket fire on both fronts was carried out by Palestinian militants in connection to this week’s violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City, where Israeli police stormed into the building with tear gas and stun grenades on two straight days. The violent scenes from the mosque have ratched up tensions across the region.
The airstrikes came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with his Security Cabinet to discuss the rockt fire. He vowed an “aggressive response.”
“We will strike our enemies and they will pay a price for every act of aggression,” he said, adding that Israelis remain united in the face of external threats despite their political differences.
There was no immediate Israeli response in Lebanon, where militants fired some 34 rockets across the border. The military said 25 were shot down by its Iron Dome aerial defense system. Five rockets struck Israeli territory and the rest of the strikes were being investigated. Israel said two people were wounded.
The unusually large salvo of rockets raised fears of a wider conflagration, as Israel’s bitter enemy, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, holds sway over much of southern Lebanon. Over the past two days, tensions have skyrocketed at the sacred compound home to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and along Israel’s tense border with Gaza.
In a briefing with reporters, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, said the army drew a clear connection between the Lebanese rocket fire and the recent unrest in Jerusalem.
“It’s a Palestinian-oriented event,” he said, adding that either the Hamas or Islamic Jihad militant groups, which are based in Gaza but also operate in Lebanon, could be involved. But he said the army believed that Hezbollah and the Lebanese government were aware of what happened and also held responsibility. He declined to say how Israel might respond, saying there were “all sorts of scenarios.”