Hamas Targets Israeli Settlements in Massive Rocket Attack

The armed wing of Palestine’s Hamas resistance movement has staged a massive rocket attack against the occupied territories, and the attacks are expected to grow in extent and intensity. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Information Center reported that the launch targeted the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, located north of the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip, run by Hamas.

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The rocket launch saw as many as 137 of the projectiles being flown towards the cities in just five minutes, the Hamas branch said. “In response to the enemy’s action to target the houses and members of the resistance, we staged the biggest-ever attack against” the cities, it noted.

Some of the missiles were intercepted by Israel´s so-called Iron Dome, but some directly hit the buildings in the targeted areas. According to Israeli media, two people were killed in the rocket barrage, and more than 80 others were injured.

Earlier, the Israeli air force bombed areas north and south of the Gaza Strip, killing at least 26 Palestinians, including nine children. 

The bloodletting has been the worst to hit the enclave in a relatively long period of time. It came amid the occupying regime’s early Ramadan-present brutal crackdown on Palestinian worshipers in the holy occupied city of Jerusalem al-Quds and its attempts to force Palestinians out of the city’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The coastal sliver’s resistance factions have announced “Operation al-Quds Sword” in retaliation for the Israeli aggression in al-Quds. They have specified that the goal of the operation is the city’s liberation from Israeli occupation.

According to the Israeli army, until Tuesday noon, a whopping 360 rockets had been fired towards the occupied territories, a sheer 250 of them passed right through the Iron Dome. The army acknowledged that this clearly indicated Hamas’ readiness.

Amid the explosive situation surrounding the occupied territories, the Israeli army asked the settlers in Ashkelon to remain in rocket shelters until further notice.

Hamas’ spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the group struggled to last as long as the aggressor kept up its atrocities. He said the enemy’s efforts to break down the resistance’s will or change the equations that the resistance has imposed on it; we're all doomed to fail.

Barhoum noted that the occupier suffered from various challenges that it was trying to evade by projecting them onto the Palestinians. However, the movement would keep standing right by the Palestinians’ side.