Mideast tensions continue to escalate - KOBI-TV NBC5 / KOTI-TV NBC2

JERUSALEM (NBC) – Israel struck scores of targets in Gaza and Palestinian militants launched more rockets early Tuesday as tensions from days of clashes in the contested city of Jerusalem dramatically escalated overnight and both sides prepared for a wider conflict. There are international calls, including from the U.S., to lower tensions.

Israeli airstrikes continued into the early hours of Tuesday morning. 130 targets across the Palestinian Gaza Strip, Israel’s military said, releasing cockpit video of the operation.

Palestinian officials say 24 people, including 9 children, died. Israel says 15 were members of the militant group Hamas.

Israel’s prime minister declared a red line was crossed with hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza, six targeting Jerusalem and two apartment buildings hit in Ashkelon. Three were injured with different levels of severity says this Israeli police officer.

The attacks follow days of unrest in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the worst violence for years there. Confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters with 700 injured the Palestinian Red Crescent says.

There is mounting anger over threatened evictions of Palestinian families with international calls for calm ignored.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “Deeply concerned about the rocket attacks that we are seeing now that need to stop and need to stop immediately.”

Palestinians are demanding President Biden intervene. “Let him look at our system and see how Palestinians live under this brutal occupation,” said medical school dean Dr. Hani Abdeen

Tuesday morning, Israel once again reverberated to the sound of retaliation and reprisals.

The Israeli defense minister has now authorized the calling up of 5,000 reservists, a signal of Israel’s determination and a signal to Washington that things could still escalate further.