An Israeli tank round killed a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip early on Saturday, bringing to 12 the overall toll from the deadliest 24 hours of violence since a devastating war more than two years ago. A truce declared by Palestinian armed groups in the enclave unravelled even before it could take hold as militants fired dozens of mortar rounds and rockets into southern Israel and the military retaliated.
Hamas put security forces and emergency services in Gaza on 24-hour alert amid the escalating tit-for-tat violence and despite calls for an end to the hostilities from both the European Union and the United Nations. Around 30 mortar rounds or rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel early on Saturday, without causing damage or casualties, military radio said. Twenty mortar bombs exploded, while 10 Grad rockets struck the area around Ashdod, Beersheba and Kiryat Gat, the radio said.
Israeli shelling killed the Palestinian and wounded a second in an eastern neighbourhood of Gaza City, medics said, without specifying whether they were militants or civilians. The Hamas interior ministry decreed a state of alert.
"All security forces must work 24 hours in 24, even civil defence and medical services, to protect and save the people targeted by the Zionist occupiers," ministry spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein said. "Groups in Gaza committed themselves to respecting the Palestinian consensus and halting rocket attacks, but the Zionist aggressor has ruined everything by attacking and killing civilians - women, children and old people," he said.
The latest fighting erupted on Thursday when Hamas militants fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, critically wounding a teenager and injuring the driver. "The attack on a school bus yesterday crossed the line... Whoever tries to hurt and murder children, his blood will be on his own head," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Prague on Friday before heading home.
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