Terrorists Violate Ceasefire with Israel

After two days of fighting, the efforts of Egyptian and United Nations intermediaries seemed to have been successful on Thursday when a ceasefire came into effect at 5:30am.

But terrorists in Gaza continued sporadic rocket fire into Israel during the day, prompting the BBC to report in the afternoon that the ceasefire was holding ‘despite rocket fire.’

That brief comment meant that the Israelis held their fire despite the violations of the ceasefire by their terrorist enemies.

However, their patience ran out after at least four rounds of rocket fire during the day.

Between 6am and 7am, several rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into the neighbouring Israeli communities, but without causing any casualties.

At around 10:54am, a salvo of five rockets were launched from Gaza City itself, as caught on camera by a Fox News reporter. Israel’s Iron Dome system detected that two of the five were heading for Israeli communities and intercepted them. Thus again there were no injuries and no damage.

Tweet by Fox News reporter

Israeli sirens sounded late in the afternoon when more incoming missiles were detected; and then at around 10pm the residents of Sderot, near the Gaza border, were again alerted to danger as the Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted another two rockets.

Thus it was that the Israelis’ patience ran out and they conducted a series of retaliatory strikes before dawn on Friday morning, hitting Islamic Jihad facilities in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

As usual, major news organisations tried to put the blame on Israel, with Al Jazeera reporting that the Gaza ceasefire was ‘under pressure after renewed Israeli air attacks.’