Israel hits Gaza after rocket fire as tensions escalate

JERUSALEM－Israel carried out its first airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in months early on Tuesday in response to a rocket fired from the region as tensions soar after a weekend of violence around a Jerusalem holy site.

Warning sirens sounded in southern Israel on Monday night after the rocket was fired from the enclave controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, the first such incident since early January.

The projectile crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv.

"One rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. The rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome Air Defense System," the Israeli military said in a statement.

Hours later, the Israeli air force said it had hit a Hamas weapons manufacturing site in retaliation.

Hamas claimed to have used its "anti-aircraft defense" to counter the air raids, which caused no casualties, according to witnesses and security sources in Gaza.

No Gaza faction immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket.

The army also said its special forces had made five arrests overnight in the West Bank.

The incident, the first of its kind since January, comes after a weekend of Israeli-Palestinian violence in and around Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that wounded more than 170 people, mostly Palestinian demonstrators.

Similar violence in Jerusalem around the same time last year triggered repeated Hamas rocket fire into Israel that escalated into an 11-day conflict.

Holy site

The spike in tensions coincides with both the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish festival of Passover.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is known to Jews as Temple Mount－the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam.

Hamas had warned on Sunday that "Al-Aqsa is ours and ours alone" and swore to defend the Palestinians' right to pray there.

The tensions complicate Israel's security ties with Jordan, which is the custodian of Al-Aqsa and has a Palestinian majority.

Jordan's King Abdullah told United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Israel's Al-Aqsa policy "seriously undermines" chances of it making peace with the Palestinians.

Diplomatic sources said the UN Security Council was to meet on Tuesday to discuss the spike in violence.

Jordan on Monday summoned the Israeli charge d'affaires "to deliver a message of protest over illegitimate and provocative Israeli violations at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque", its foreign ministry said in a statement.

Jordanian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Haitham Abu Al-Foul stressed the need to respect the right of worshippers to perform their prayers without any restrictions, calling for an end to all attempts to impose temporal and spatial division in the holy sites.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi announced on Monday that the kingdom will host a meeting with the participation of several Arab states to look into measures to respond to the Israeli actions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Agencies - Xinhua