Barrage of rockets fired from Gaza towards Tel Aviv and airport as flights redirected – World News

Hamas says they have fired a rocket towards an airport in Israel as flights are re-directed across the country.

Israel redirected some flights to Ramon Airport from its main Tel Aviv-area airport, Ben Gurion, due to the security scare though were no immediate reports of sirens going off nor an impact in the area.

An Israeli official said Israel’s southern Ramon airport had not been targeted by Palestinian rocket fire and was operating as usual despite the claims by Hamas.

Rockets and missiles have been fired between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel’s military since Monday as the latest tensions related to land ownership in Jerusalem reach a boiling point.

Israeli troops massed at Gaza’s border on Thursday and Palestinian militants pounded Israel with rockets in intense hostilities that have caused international concern.

In renewed air strikes on Gaza, Israel struck a six-storey residential building in Gaza City that it said belonged to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Palestinian enclave.

At least 83 people have been killed in Gaza since violence escalated on Monday, medics said, further straining hospitals already under heavy pressure during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are facing Israel and Covid-19. We are in between two enemies,” Asad Karam, 20, a construction worker, standing beside a road damaged during the air strikes told Reuters.

An electricity pole had collapsed by the road, its wires severed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to “continue acting to strike at the military capabilities of Hamas” and other Gaza groups.

In a stark warning on Wednesday he said: “This is just the beginning. We’ll hit them like they’ve never dreamed possible.”

Israel has also warned that it will not consider a ceasefire until there is “total, long-term quiet”.

In the latest Palestinian rocket attacks, one rocket crashed into a building near Israel’s commercial capital of Tel Aviv, injuring five Israelis, police said.

Sirens blared in cities across southern Israel, sending thousands running for shelters.

Seven people have been killed in Israel, its military said.

“All of Israel is under attack. It’s a very scary situation to be in,” said Margo Aronovic, a 26-year-old student, in Tel Aviv.

Israel has prepared combat troops along the Gaza border and was in “various stages of preparing ground operations”, a military spokesman said, a move that would recall similar incursions during Israel-Gaza wars in 2014 and 2008-2009.

Health authorities in Gaza said they were investigating the deaths of several people overnight who they said may have inhaled poisonous gas.

Samples were being examined and they had yet to draw any final conclusions, they said.

Boris Johnson said on Thursday Britain wanted to see an urgent de-escalation of violence in Israel.

“Certainly we in the UK are very sad to see what is happening and the cycle of violence that now seems to be taking place,” the PM said.

“I think it’s important that we break that cycle and we end this idea of reprisals, and I think that what everybody wants to see is urgent, urgent de-escalation.”

It comes as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Iberia all cancelled flights to Tel Aviv as European carriers joined US airlines in avoiding Israel.