Israeli airstrikes hit sites in Gaza

Violence at the border continues to escalate ahead of holy days

Aref Tufaha, Associated Press

Israeli airstrikes hit sites in Gaza — Casper Star-Tribune, 25 September 2023 — Casper Star-Tribune · Casper, Wyoming · 25 September 2023

Transcribed from the clipping

“NOUR SHAMS REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Israeli airstrikes hit sites in Gaza on Sunday for the third straight day, the Israeli military said, after Palestinians near the border fence launched incendiary balloons into Israel and threw an explosive at soldiers.

The strike came on the heels of an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank that Palestinian health officials said killed two Palestinians. It was the latest bloodshed in a surge of violence during a sensitive Jewish holiday period.

A series of violent escalations on the border between Israel and Gaza over the past week has raised the specter of an escalation for the first time since a brief round of conflict last May between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group. It comes at a fraught time.

Jews are set to mark Yom Kippur, the holiest day on their calendar, on Sunday night followed by the weeklong Sukkot festival later in the month. There were no reported casualties from the strikes in Gaza. Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli military shot and wounded five Palestinians who rallied at the separation fence along the Israeli frontier with the crowded enclave.

It’s a familiar tactic for Palestinians in Gaza protesting a 16-year blockade imposed by Israel with Egypt’s help. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent the Hamas militant group from arming itself. The Israeli army said Sunday it targeted two posts belonging to Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza, just east of the Bureij refugee camp and Jabaliya.

The posts were close to the fence separating the territory from Israel, where dozens of Palestinians have been holding daily demonstrations for the past week. For the third time in as many days, media outlets posted photos of militant protesters sending a barrage of balloons attached to incendiary devices over the eastern border.

The Israeli army said the balloons set two fires in Israel. Rising tensions were also palpable in the West Bank. Earlier in the day, the Israeli military said it moved into the Nour Shams refugee camp, near the town of Tulkarem, to destroy what it described as a militant command center and bomb-storage facility in a building.

It said engineering units detonated bombs planted under roads and that militants opened fire and hurled explosives as troops fired back. The Hamas militant group claimed Abu Ali as a member.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Birzeit University, a major Palestinian institution, said the Israeli army carried out a rare raid on its campus near the city of Ramallah and arrested nine students, including the head of the student council. It said the students were all supporters of the Hamas militant group. The university denounced the raid.

Israel has been carrying out stepped-up military raids, primarily in the northern West Bank, for the past year and a half in what it says is a campaign to root out Palestinian militants. But Palestinians say the raids entrench Israel’s 56-year occupation over the West Bank.

Some 190 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to a tally by The Associated Press.”

Context added by this archive

Eleven days before the line this archive stops at. A Palestinian reporter and a Palestinian photographer, in a Wyoming daily, and the figure at the foot of the column is the agency’s own: some 190 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the start of the year.

The raid on Birzeit University and the arrest of nine students, including the head of the student council, is a single paragraph.

Cite this item

"Israeli airstrikes hit sites in Gaza," Casper Star-Tribune, 25 September 2023. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2023-083. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2023-083