After deadly Gaza protests, rockets hit southern Israel

By Fares Akram / ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Transcribed from the clipping

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli aircraft struck several militant sites across the Gaza Strip early Saturday shortly after militants fired rockets into southern Israel, the Israeli military said. Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot conducted situational assessment while the airstrikes and barrages of rockets continued, the army added without elaborating.

The cross-border violence came hours after Israeli forces shot and killed four Palestinians protesting along the perimeter fence dividing the Hamas-ruled Gaza and Israel.

In a rare statement implicitly claiming responsibility for the rocket fire, the smaller Islamic Jihad group said it has always exercised restraint, but it "can no longer stand idle before the continued killing of innocents and bloodshed by the Israeli occupation." There was no word on injuries as a result of the rockets and airstrikes.

The bloodshed and exchange of missiles complicated the mission of Egyptian mediators, who intensified their shuttle diplomacy to achieve calm and prevent a full-blown conflict between the militant Hamas group and Israel. The Israeli army has confirmed at least 12 launchings, adding its Iron Dome defense system intercepted several missiles.

On Friday, thousands of Palestinians gathered at five locations along the boundary, burning tires and throwing rocks, grenades and firebombs at Israeli troops who responded with tear gas and occasional live fire. The Israeli army said some suspects briefly crossed the fence.

In a separate incident, the military said its aircrafts struck three Hamas military posts in northern Gaza Strip. Three of the dead were reported in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to the ministry. Witnesses said that dozens of protesters approached the fence there. In northern Gaza, a 27-year-old man died after being shot in the head, the ministry said.

It added that 170 other protesters sustained various injuries. Hamas has scaled down the protests over the past two weeks as Egypt stepped up its efforts to secure calm.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

The third printing of the same AP story in this batch, identical in wording to The Free-Lance Star version down to "implicitly". The difference is the picture.

Where The Free-Lance Star ran Adel Hana's photograph of a Palestinian protester holding the flag, this paper ran an AFP frame of an explosion with no human being in it: "A picture shows a fireball exploding during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City." Credit: Mahmud Hams / AFP/Getty Images.

Same words, same day, and the reader of one paper sees a man and the reader of the other sees a flash in the dark.

Cite this clipping

"After deadly Gaza protests, rockets hit southern Israel," The Courier of Montgomery County, 27 October 2018. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2018-033. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2018-033