Rockets, Zionist airstrikes stoke new clashes

Rockets, Zionist airstrikes stoke new clashes

JERUSALEM: Palestinian militants in Gaza and Zionist warplanes exchanged fire early Thursday in the biggest escalation in months, followed by fresh violence at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque. Zionists carried out air strikes in central Gaza after midnight, hours after a rocket fired by militants hit the garden of a house in southern Zionist entity-the first such fire to hit the Jewish state since January. The military said it had hit an underground rocket factory, prompting another volley of at least four more rockets from the impoverished territory run by Islamist movement Hamas.

The exchanges come after nearly a month of deadly violence – focused on Jerusalem’s super-sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. Zionist police fired tear gas and multiple stun grenades inside the compound in annexed east Jerusalem again on Thursday, AFP journalists reported. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics were treating a person who was hit in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet inside the Al-Aqsa.

Zionist police said dozens of “rioters” had thrown stones and petrol bombs from the mosque. “A violent splinter group is stopping Muslim worshippers from entering the mosque and causing damage to the site,” the police alleged, adding that