JERUSALEM: Palestinian militants fired volleys of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which responded with air strikes in the early hours of Thursday in the biggest escalation since an 11-day war last year.
A rocket from Gaza on Wednesday evening fell harmlessly in a garden in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, police said.
Israel struck back in central Gaza after midnight, witnesses and security sources said, prompting further launches of at least four rockets by militants in the besieged territory.
Israel said its jets had targeted a military post and a tunnel complex “containing raw chemicals used for the manufacturing of rocket engines”.
Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules the Gaza Strip, said it had fired surface-to-air rockets at Israeli planes.
The exchanges come after nearly a month of deadly violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, focused on Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Israeli police said Thursday that 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.
Seven Palestinians, all residents of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, had been arrested on suspicion of taking part in “violent incidents” on Wednesday, it added.
Hours earlier, Israeli police had blocked crowds of Jewish ultra-nationalist protesters from approaching the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, aiming to head off an escalation after four weeks of violence that have left at least 36 people dead.
Last year, a similar ultra-nationalist march had been scheduled in the Old City when Hamas launched a barrage of rockets towards Israel, sparking the 11-day war.
Early Wednesday evening, more than 1,000 ultra-nationalist demonstrators waving Israeli flags had gathered, some shouting “death to the Arabs”, but police blocked them from reaching Damascus Gate and the Old City’s Muslim quarter.
Far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir, a controversial opposition politician, led the protest after being barred from the Damascus Gate area earlier in the day by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
