Sirens sound in Tel Aviv after four months: Hamas says it has launched a major rocket attack

Hamas said it fired rockets at Tel Aviv on Sunday, setting off sirens in the Israeli city for the first time in four months as the Palestinian group sought to demonstrate its military strength despite Israel’s Gaza offensive.

The Israeli military said it had identified eight missiles from the area of ​​Rafah, the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, where Israel continued operations despite a ruling by the UN’s top court ordering Israel to stop attacks on the city.

The Israeli military said a number of the missiles were intercepted. Israeli rescue services said there were no reports of casualties.

In a statement on its Telegram channel, Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades said the rockets were fired in response to “Zionist massacres of civilians.”

The Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa television station said the rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip.

Rafah is located about 100 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.

A person uses his phone to take photos of the damage to a house caused by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it wants to locate Hamas fighters holed up in Rafah and free hostages held in the area, but its attack has worsened the situation for civilians and sparked an international outcry.

At least five Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in Rafah on Sunday, according to local health officials.

Israeli tanks are probing the outskirts of the city, near the main southern border crossing with Egypt, but have not yet entered the city with full force.

After the rocket salvo, Israeli hardliner and Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – who is not a member of the Israeli war cabinet – called on the army to attack Rafah more harshly.

“Rafah at full power,” he posted on X.

The Israeli offensive has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked communities in southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

Fighting also continued on Sunday in the northern Gaza region of Jabaliya, a densely built-up area that saw weeks of heavy fighting at the start of the war. During a raid on a school, the military said it discovered a weapons cache containing dozens of rocket parts and weapons.

She denied Hamas claims that Palestinian fighters had kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

A media representative works in a room that was damaged after rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Ceasefire talks

Efforts to secure a halt to fighting and the release of more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza have been stalled for weeks, but there have been signs of movement following meetings between Israeli and US intelligence officials and the Prime Minister of Qatar.

An official familiar with the matter said the decision to resume talks this week was based on new proposals from Egyptian and Qatari mediators and with “active participation from the United States.”

However, a Hamas official downplayed the report, telling Reuters: “It is not true.”

Izzat El-Reshiq, a senior Hamas official in exile, said the group had not received any new dates from mediators for the resumption of talks, contrary to Israeli media reports.

Reshiq reiterated Hamas’ demands, which include: “The aggression must end completely and permanently throughout the Gaza Strip, not just in Rafah.”

While Israel demands the release of the hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the war will not end until Hamas is destroyed.

Aid trucks reach Gaza

Israel is facing calls to send more aid to Gaza after the war has lasted for more than seven months and caused widespread destruction and starvation in the enclave.

Israel was preparing on Sunday to allow around 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza through Kerem Shalom on the southeastern border of the Palestinian enclave, bypassing the main Rafah border crossing, which has been blocked for weeks.

It follows an agreement between US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Friday to temporarily send aid supplies across the border crossing.

Khaled Zayed, a representative of the Egyptian Red Crescent, told Reuters that 200 trucks carrying aid, including four tankers, were expected to arrive through the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Sunday.

Egyptian state-run news channel Al Qahera News TV published a video on social media platform X that allegedly shows aid trucks entering Kerem Shalom, which was the main trade crossing between Israel, Egypt and Gaza before the conflict.

The Rafah border crossing has been closed for nearly three weeks after Israel took control of the Palestinian side of the crossing on May 6 as part of its intensified offensive in the area.

Egypt is increasingly concerned about the prospect of large numbers of Palestinians entering its territory from the Gaza Strip and is refusing to open its side of the Rafah border crossing.

Israel said it would not restrict aid deliveries, had opened new border crossings in the north and was cooperating with the United States, which had built a temporary floating pier for aid deliveries.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)