Israel bombs Gaza's Interior Ministry

  • 12 years ago
Firefighters extinguished flames at the Interior Ministry in Gaza on Friday morning (November 16), following an Israeli airstrike.

Both Israel and Hamas agreed to stop fighting during a three-hour visit by the Egyptian prime minister on Friday, a senior Israeli government official said, but rockets fired from Gaza hit several sites in southern Israel and the Israeli air force responded with an attack in Gaza.

Israeli warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza City, rattling tall buildings.

In a hint of escalation, the spokesman for Israel's military said it had received the green light to call in up to 30,000 reserve troops.

Two days of Israeli air strikes have killed 19 Palestinians, including seven militants and 12 civilians, among them six children and a pregnant woman. A Hamas rocket killed three Israelis in the town of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday morning.

The latest upsurge in the long-running conflict came on Wednesday when Israel killed Hamas' military mastermind, Ahmed Al-Jaabari, in a precision air strike on his car. Israel then began shelling the coastal enclave from land, air and sea.