Death toll rises as Gaza militants fire more than 400 rockets into Israel and Israel responds with airstrikes - The Washington Post

JERUSALEM — An escalation in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza over the weekend also brought with it a growing death toll Sunday, with reports that six Palestinians, including a pregnant mother and a baby, had been killed by Israeli air strikes on the Palestinian enclave and one Israeli man killed as more than 450 rockets and projectiles were fired into southern Israel from Gaza.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said based on the army’s intelligence it appeared that the pregnant mother and the baby were killed by Hamas’s own rockets and not Israel, though he offered no further proof. The country’s Iron Dome Defense system had saved countless lives in Israel, intercepting at least 150 of the rockets and projectiles that had been fired by Palestinian militant factions since Saturday morning, he said.

The flare-up, the most severe in months, looked set to threaten Egyptian and international attempts to forge a long-term truce arrangement between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza.

In Israel, rocket sirens blared through the day Saturday and overnight sending thousands of Israeli civilians — as far as 30 miles from Gaza — into bomb shelters. Authorities said an Israeli man, 58, was killed in his home in the coastal city of Ashkelon. He is the first Israeli to be killed from Gaza rocket fire since Israel and Hamas fought a deadly 50-day war in the summer of 2014.

[After more than 2,100 deaths, the Gaza war ends where it began]

The Israeli military said in a statement that 70 percent of the rockets fired in the last 24-hours had landed in open areas, but some scored direct hits on homes and buildings. In Kiryat Gat, a town about 20 miles from Gaza, Israeli emergency services said an 80-year-old woman was seriously injured during a rocket barrage. 

In Gaza, health authorities said four men in their twenties and the 37-year-old pregnant woman and child were killed in Israeli airstrikes. There were also reports from Gaza that five residential buildings were destroyed, including one housing Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency. 

Israeli officials said airstrikes had hit more than 100 “terror targets” through Saturday and overnight, including offices belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant faction in Gaza. The army said it had also destroyed an attack tunnel crossing from Gaza into Israeli territory.

Conricus, the Israeli military spokesman, said homes belonging to militants were legitimate military targets and that, in total, some 220 “military targets” had been hit. He also said the army was in the process deploying an armored brigade to the area in preparation for “offensive missions.”

Saturday’s violence comes in the midst of negotiations over a longer-term truce between Hamas and Israel, during which the militant group has tried to assert pressure with rocket fire and incendiary balloons. Hamas is attempting to secure an easing of Israeli restrictions on trade and movement, in return for a lull in violence. 

U.N. peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov called for calm from both sides.

“Continuing down the current path of escalation will quickly undo what has been achieved and destroy the chances for long-time solutions to the crisis,” he said in a statement. “This endless cycle of violence must end, and efforts must accelerate to realize a political solution to the crisis in Gaza.”

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Israel would “respond forcefully and swiftly to any attack on the security of our people.” 

Israeli authorities said schools in the southern cities of Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod would be closed Sunday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to hold an emergency meeting with his security cabinet on Sunday afternoon.

In a joint statement, Gaza’s militant factions said the rocket fire was in response to the “targeting and assassination” of their militants a day earlier. “Our response will be tougher and larger and broader in the face of aggression,” they said in a statement. 

The Israeli military reported on Friday that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a shooting incident along its border with Gaza. In response, Israel struck sites belonging to the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, killing two fighters. 

Also on Friday, two Palestinian protesters were killed taking part in ongoing weekly demonstrations at the border fence with Israel, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. 

“It’s a reply to the Israeli targeting of peaceful civilians yesterday by Israeli snipers during the 58th Friday of Great March of Return,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s bureau for international relations, referring to the weekly protests staged in Gaza since last year. “Also, to the procrastination policies of the occupation toward lifting the siege on Gaza.”

[Thousands gather in Gaza to mark anniversary of bloody border protests ]

Gazans have been holding weekly demonstrations along the border, protesting the dire humanitarian situation in the strip that worsens daily and the ongoing land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel since Hamas forcibly took power in 2007. Egypt opens its border with Gaza only sporadically. 

Hamas spokesman Abdullatif al-Qanoua said the group would continue to “respond to the crimes of the occupation” and “not allow the blood of our people to be shed.” 

Musab al-Buraim, spokesman for Islamic Jihad, said in a short statement that it too was committed to “resistance.” 

Representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad visited Egypt this past week to discuss the understandings reached with Israel to reduce tensions. The Egyptians have spent months trying to forge a long-term truce between the sides to bring calm and ease conditions for 2 million Gazans.

But Saturday’s unrest, disrupting the lives of so many Israeli citizens, could impact attempts by Netanyahu to form a coalition after being reelected for a fifth term. His last government began to unravel after a similar flare-up with Gaza, when then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman resigned after calling for a tougher approach to the rocket fire.

[Netanyahu faces pressure for tougher Gaza response]

Standing down from his post in November, Liberman, head of the hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu party, said that agreeing to the cease-fire with Hamas was “surrendering to terror.” He proposed firmer military action against Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza, even if that risked a wider conflict.

In March, Netanyahu’s trip to Washington to meet with President Trump and speak at the annual AIPAC policy conference was cut short after a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a house in central Israel. 

Rocket fire and airstrikes similar to Saturday’s happen periodically. 

In 2014, a 50-day deadly war between Israel and Hamas saw hundreds of rockets being fired into Israel, reaching as far as Tel Aviv, and massive Israeli aerial bombardments, killing more than 2,000 Palestinians. More than 70 Israelis and one foreign national were also killed.

There were concerns in Israel that unrest could disrupt preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest, an international singing event taking place in Tel Aviv this month. Contestants from across Europe are already in Israel to prepare for the event.

Balousha reported from Gaza. Morris reported from Tel Aviv. 

 

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2019-05-05 09:14:31Z
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Israel strikes Gaza targets in response to Palestinian heavy rocket fire - Fox News

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired scores of rockets into southern Israel Saturday, prompting an Israeli response with airstrikes and tank fire.

The flare-up shattered a month-long lull in violence.

The European Union's ambassador to Israel, Emanuele Giaufret, sharply criticized the rocket attacks on Twitter, saying "firing indiscriminately against civilians (is) unacceptable."

ISRAEL SAYS 2 SOLDIERS WOUNDED BY GUNFIRE FROM GAZA

Israeli officials said a 50-year-old woman was severely wounded by rocket fire, while a teenage boy was mildly hurt as he ran for cover.

An explosion caused by an Israeli airstrike on a building in Gaza City, Saturday.<br> ​​Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired scores of into southern Israel on Saturday, triggering retaliatory airstrikes and tank fire.  (AP)

Gaza's Health Ministry said a Palestinian infant was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Israeli police said a house in the coastal city of Ashkelon was damaged.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system shot down dozens of the rockets, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, according to the BBC.

In response, the IDF launched air and artillery strikes against 30 Gaza sites belonging to the militant group Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the BBC reported.

AS ISRAELI GROUP EXPANDS, PALESTINIAN HOUSES FACE DEMOLITION

Israeli airstrike hits Gaza City, Saturday, May 4, 2019. Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired at least 90 rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, according to the Israeli military, triggering retaliatory airstrikes and tank fire against militant targets in the blockaded enclave and shattering a month-long lull in violence. (AP)

Leaders of the two groups were in Egypt for talks with mediators aimed at restoring a fraying cease-fire. Hamas leaders have hoped the recent calm would pave the way for a deeper, longer-term cease-fire.

“Egypt has stepped up its efforts with Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Israel but there is no conclusion yet,” said a Palestinian official familiar with Cairo’s mediation efforts told Reuters.

Tensions have risen in recent days amid allegations from Hamas that Israel has been delaying implementation of last month's cease-fire understandings.

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The Israeli military accused the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad of instigating this round of violence by shooting and wounding two Israeli soldiers Friday. It said the shooting was not coordinated with Hamas, but blamed the movement for the flare-up in its capacity as the territory's rulers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2019-05-04 18:24:28Z
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North Korea’s “projectiles” launch not a cause for concern — yet - Vox.com

North Korea fired off a few projectiles on Friday night — setting off a chaotic half day where it seemed the sputtering relationships between Washington, Seoul, and Pyongyang could come crashing down.

South Korea’s military initially said that its northern neighbor launched a short-range “missile” into the Sea of Japan from Wonsan in the country’s east between 9:06 am and 9:27 am local time on Saturday. Shortly after, though, Seoul revised its analysis to say Pyongyang set off “several projectiles,” thereby downgrading the kind of weapons used. It remains unclear how many projectiles North Korea fired or what kind were shot, although what is certain is they didn’t travel more than about 120 miles.

The specifics matter here. The United States and North Korea are engaged in months-long negotiations over how to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he’s fine with the protracted talks as long as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doesn’t test any more missiles, especially ones that can reach the US carrying a nuclear warhead. Kim’s last test of that kind came in November 2017.

But should Kim conduct another long range missile test, it’s conceivable Trump and aides around him — particularly National Security Adviser John Bolton — could decide diplomacy has failed and revert back to the “fire and fury” threats of 2017.

People familiar with the scene inside the White House Friday night told me there was some fear about that possibility.

“Trump is pissed off, like Kim fucked him over,” a source told me anonymously shortly after Bolton briefed the president. Senior aides were “urging him not to tweet anything” until he spoke with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who leads his own talks with North Korea to improve ties on the peninsula. US officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, spoke to their South Korean counterparts.

Many experts didn’t think North Korea’s show of force crossed Trump’s red line, but they said the danger lied in how the president would react to the news.

“The talks now depend on whether the president responds proportionately to the launches, or instead decides to overreact or ignore them,” Adam Mount, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program at the Federation of American Scientists, told me. “It’s not clear this president is willing or able to discern facts about the projectiles fired.”

But Friday night and early Saturday morning came and went without any reaction from the president — until 9:42 am.

Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2019

So it seems that the worst was avoided, although the episode seemingly left a mark on the president. “Trump is not happy, but not flipping out like last night,” one person familiar with the situation told me.

The question now is why North Korea would risk angering Trump by firing off a few “projectiles.” There are two main hypotheses.

First, Kim hoped that his talks with the US and South Korea would’ve paid off by now, but that hasn’t happened yet.

In February, Trump and Kim met in Vietnam to make a deal on ending North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, but the summit ended early as both sides made demands the other couldn’t accept. Since then talks have all but stalled and there has been little sign of progress.

“It sounds like Kim wants Trump to get moving on US-North Korea issues, and he’s not being shy about it,” Grace Liu, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told me.

Second, the US and South Korea are engaged in a military exercise, although they scaled it down to avoid any tensions with the North. Pyongyang considers these drills as nothing short of a thinly veiled prelude to invasion and has historically reacted with shows of force. It’s very possible, then, that launching a few short-range projectiles was just another of those signs of displeasure.

That means Friday night’s perilous moment surely wasn’t meant as an incitement for war. The problem is that incitement may come soon.

Pyongyang says it will give Washington by the end of 2019 to strike a nuclear deal or it may find other ways to get America to comply. Experts I spoke to say that means the window for a negotiated agreement is closing fast — which in turn implies future North Korean provocations might be a lot more troubling still.

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2019-05-04 16:14:23Z
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Fareed Zakaria: North Korea played Trump from the start - CNN

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2019-05-04 15:20:44Z
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Pompeo announces new sanctions on Iran's nuclear power complex - Washington Examiner

Saturday brought new sanctions on Iran's nuclear reactor and power plant complex aimed at blocking the nation's development of nuclear weapons.

"Starting May 4, assistance to expand Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant beyond the existing reactor unit will be exposed to sanctions," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced late in the evening on Friday.

The tightening on sanctions on Iran's nuclear power complex is meant to curb its ability to refine uranium and mitigate its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Pompeo said Iran would not be able to return to the negotiating table until it ceases all activities related to, or associated with, the construction of a nuclear weapon.

The new sanctions would mean that any country that assists Iran in its completion of the nuclear power plant will be subject to punitive measures enforced by the U.S. government.

The original Bushehr power plant was designed and built by Russia over a decade ago. Iran is now looking to expand the plant with an additional reactor. It is not clear if Russia is looking to assist in the construction of the project.

The new sanctions would also cover any involvement in transferring enriched uranium out of Iran in exchange for mined uranium from the Islamic Republic.

"The United States has been clear that Iran must stop all proliferation-sensitive activities, including uranium enrichment, and we will not accept actions that support the continuation of such enrichment," Pompeo said in a statement.

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2019-05-04 14:12:00Z
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New North Korea Weapons Test Threatens Trump’s Diplomatic Achievement - The New York Times

JEJU, South Korea — When North Korea launched a volley of projectiles off its east coast on Saturday, it sought to escalate the pressure on President Trump to return to the negotiating table with a compromise on easing sanctions, analysts said, by signaling that it could scuttle his biggest diplomatic achievement with the North.

Saturday’s weapons tests were the most serious by the North since the country launched its Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles in November 2017. Although North Korea has not gone so far as to renege on its moratorium on nuclear and ICBM tests, which its leader, Kim Jong-un, announced last year, the Saturday launch indicated that Mr. Kim was toying with the idea of lifting the moratorium, analysts said.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly described the moratorium as his biggest achievement on North Korea, citing it as proof that his diplomacy with Mr. Kim has been working. The leaders have met twice: first in Singapore in June and again in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February.

“Today’s provocation means that Kim Jong-un is becoming increasingly pessimistic” that he could work out a settlement with Mr. Trump, said Lee Byong-chol, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

“There may be some minor adjustments in the North’s behavior depending on how the U.S. responds, but in the long term, it seems increasingly clear that Kim has decided to go his own way.”

American and South Korean authorities were analyzing flight data from the tests to identify what types of weapons were launched, the office of President Moon Jae-in of South Korea said. South Korean officials said the “short-range” projectiles flew only 42 to 124 miles off the North’s east coast, ruling out the possibility that the country had resumed tests of intermediate- or intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

Those tests had prompted Mr. Trump to threaten to rain “fire and fury” down on the North and had raised the chance of military conflict on the Korean Peninsula in 2017.

South Korean officials said they were also looking into the possibility that the projectiles were short-range Scud missiles or rockets from multiple-launch tubes — or both.

The potential implications of any short-range missile tests could be far-reaching. The short-range weapons were developed mainly to target South Korea and United States military bases there. North Korea also tested weapons in November last year and again last month. But those weapons were largely considered tactical types with very small ranges.

By gradually increasing the ranges of weapons tests in recent weeks, Mr. Kim appeared to be carefully calibrating his options with Mr. Trump. Firing short-range weapons may be an attempt to force a breakthrough in the stalled negotiations with Washington while not provoking Mr. Trump too far, analysts said.

The Hanoi meeting in February abruptly ended when Mr. Trump rejected Mr. Kim’s suggestion that Washington lift the most painful of sanctions imposed against his country since 2016 in return for a partial dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program. Mr. Trump wanted the quick rollback of the North’s entire nuclear weapons program.

After returning home without badly needed relief from sanctions, Mr. Kim said he would give Mr. Trump until the end of the year to offer a new proposal.

But any weapons test by North Korea increases uncertainty. Mr. Kim may be deliberately provoking Mr. Trump into lashing out with fiery rhetoric so that the North could use that as an excuse to resume nuclear or long-range missiles, analysts said.

Image

President Trump and with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February. Their summit meeting ended abruptly.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

“Pyongyang is saying plainly that without progress in the talks, tests are likely to resume in full,” said Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “While it’s clear that this is meant to send a more restrained signal than a return to tests of longer range missiles that Kim Jong-un voluntarily paused, what’s not clear is whether the president will draw that distinction.”

Mr. Trump’s initial response suggested that the tests had not dented his optimism on negotiations with North Korea.

“I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it,” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!”

Even so, the tests placed further strain on Mr. Moon’s flagship policy of facilitating dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang.

In Seoul, Mr. Moon’s office expressed “serious concern” that North Korea was violating the spirit of the inter-Korean agreement to ease military tensions that was signed when the South Korean president visited Pyongyang in September. It urged North Korea to return to the negotiating table with Washington.

Mr. Moon’s government had hoped to use the United Nations’ latest report of food shortages in North Korea to urge Washington to allow aid shipments to its neighbor, hoping that would help restart the stalled dialogue, said Woo Jung-yeop, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute in South Korea.

“It has become much more difficult for the South to push for food aid as an incentive for North Korea,” he said.

Japan’s initial response to the launches was muted, as the tests occurred just as the new emperor, Naruhito, was greeting the public for the first time on Saturday morning at the imperial palace in Tokyo. The Defense Ministry put out a notice saying that the projectiles had not landed in Japanese territorial waters.

Like the rest of the region, Japan was waiting to see how Mr. Trump reacted to the provocations. Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that he would be willing to meet Mr. Kim on an “unconditional” basis, retreating from a more hawkish position in which the Japanese leader had indicated that he would meet with the North Korean dictator only once he had taken concrete steps toward denuclearization and agreed to resolve a dispute over Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and ’80s.

Other analysts warned against reading too much into the North’s tests on Saturday, calling them as much a sign of desperation as a show of force. Since 2016, Washington has led a campaign at the United Nations Security Council to strangle the North’s economy by banning all its key exports, including coal and textiles, as well as drastically cutting its oil imports.

“They are in such a desperate economic situation,” said Bonji Ohara, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan.

Mr. Kim’s message is “the U.S. must compromise, not North Korea. That’s why they fired relatively short-range rockets this time, ” said Hideshi Takesada, a professor of international relations and security issues with a focus on the Korean Peninsula at the Graduate School of Takushoku University.

The short-range weapons tested on Saturday were “more about repelling an invasion than starting a war,” said Melissa Hanham, a North Korean weapons expert at the One Earth Future Foundation. “Probably what is happening is some kind of testing of a unit to make sure that everyone is prepped and ready, and it is probably somewhat routine.”

Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, which is based in Washington, said that while Mr. Kim was sending a message to Washington that “the door for diplomacy is not open forever,” he was also likely to be signaling strength to his domestic population.

“He was embarrassed in Hanoi,” said Mr. Panda, referring to the failed summit meeting between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump. “So he needs to continue to show people in North Korea that he’s still a strong leader.”

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2019-05-04 13:25:20Z
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South Korea set to respond to North's launch of short-range 'projectiles' - New York Post

South Korea is poised to respond to additional missile launches after North Korea fired several short-range “projectiles” into the sea off its eastern coast.

The South Korean military issued a statement that the projectiles launched Saturday flew up to 125 miles before splashing into the sea.

The South has bolstered its surveillance, and is working with the US to analyze the weapons, the Associated Press reported. If they find that the North fired banned ballistic missiles, it would be the first such launch since November 2017.

That year, President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un were lurching toward possible war, but tensions cooled and the two met for the first time in Singapore last year, with a vague agreement promising “denuclearization” the result.

A second meeting in Vietnam earlier this year was less successful. Some see the latest missiles as a sign of Pyongyang’s growing frustration at the stalled talks with Washington meant to provide coveted sanctions relief in return for nuclear disarmament.

Experts say the North may increase these sorts of low-level provocations to apply pressure on the United States to agree to reduce crushing international sanctions.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the United States was aware of North Korea’s actions and would continue to monitor the situation.

With Post wires

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2019-05-04 12:57:00Z
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