GAZA: Palestinian firefighters douse a huge fire at the Foamco mattress factory after it was struck by Zionist forces east of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. - AFP

GAZA CITY: Zionist jets kept pounding Gaza yesterday afternoon, as the enclave's residents cowered indoors and the violence that has killed more than 200 people, most of them Palestinians, entered a second week. Before dawn, within just a few minutes, dozens of Zionist strikes bombarded the crowded Palestinian coastal strip controlled by Islamist group Hamas.

Flames lit up the sky as intense explosions shook Gaza City, sparking widespread power cuts and damaging hundreds of buildings, local authorities said. Some 3,200 rockets have been fired by Palestinian militants toward the Zionist entity since the conflict escalated on May 10 in the heaviest exchange of fire in years, sparked by unrest in Jerusalem.

In Gaza, dust clouds from explosions rose near its Mediterranean port, with the Zionist army confirming it had targeted "a Hamas submergible naval weapon". West Gaza resident Mahdi Abed Rabbo, 39, expressed "horror and fear" at the intensity of the onslaught, saying: "There have never been strikes of this magnitude." Another Gaza resident, Mani Qazaat, said Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "should realize we're civilians, not fighters". "I felt like I was dying," he said about enduring a heavy aerial bombardment.

The Zionist army said yesterday it had hit the homes of nine "high-ranking" Hamas commanders, a day after bombing the house of Yahya Sinwar, head of the group's political wing. It gave no details of any casualties. An Islamic Jihad commander was killed yesterday, a source within the group and the Zionist army said. Fighter jets also hit what the Zionist army calls the "Metro", its term for Hamas' underground tunnels, which the Zionist entity has previously acknowledged runs in part through civilian areas.

The renewed strikes come a day after 42 Palestinians in Gaza - including at least eight children and two doctors, according to the health ministry - were killed in the worst daily death toll in the enclave since the bombardments began. In total, 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including at least 59 children, and more than 1,300 wounded since the Zionist entity launched its air campaign against Hamas after the group fired rockets, according to the authorities there.

The Zionist entity says 10 people, including one child, have been killed and more than 300 wounded by rocket fire that has been the most intense to ever rain down on the Jewish state. Islamic Jihad said it fired more rockets towards Tel Aviv, and air raids sirens wailed across the Zionist entity again yesterday, especially near the Gaza border.

Paramedics yesterday provided medical treatment to 10 wounded people in Ashdod, including three hit by shattered glass, the Zionist entity's Magen David Adom emergency service said. Netanyahu said Sunday that the Zionist entity's campaign would "take time" to finish. Zionist bombardment of Gaza has displaced 38,000 people and made 2,500 homeless, the United Nations says.

It has also battered crucial infrastructure, with the electricity authority yesterday warning it only had enough fuel left to provide power for another two to three days. On Saturday, the Zionist entity gave journalists from Al Jazeera and AP news agency an hour to evacuate their offices before launching air strikes, turning their tower block into a pile of smoking rubble.

Netanyahu on Sunday said the building also hosted a Palestinian "terrorist" intelligence office and claimed it was a "perfectly legitimate target". US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said yesterday he had requested "details" and a "justification" for the strike.

The violence between Hamas and the Zionist entity is the worst since 2014, when the Zionist entity launched a military operation on the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of ending rocket fire and destroying tunnels used for smuggling. The war left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side, mostly civilians, and 74 on the Zionist side, mostly soldiers.

Opening a session of the UN Security Council on the renewed violence on Sunday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the fighting "utterly appalling". But the UN talks, already delayed by the Zionist entity's ally the United States, resulted in little action, with Washington opposing a resolution. President Joe Biden's administration says it is working behind the scenes, and that a Security Council statement could backfire.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced "solidarity" with the Zionist entity in a call with Netanyahu yesterday, reaffirming the state's "right to defend itself" against rocket attacks, her spokesman said. France's President Emmanuel Macron and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, visiting Paris, agreed to continue pushing for "a rapid ceasefire" to avoid a widening of the conflict, Macron's office said.

US envoy for the Zionist entity's and Palestinian affairs Hady Amr was in Ramallah yesterday and met with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who urged Washington to act against "(the Zionist entity's) aggression," the official Wafa news agency reported. The Zionist entity is also trying to contain inter-communal violence between Jews and Arabs, as well unrest in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinian authorities say Zionist forces have killed 19 Palestinians since May 10.

A 56-year-old Zionist man who was beaten in the city of Lod last week died in hospital yesterday, police said. Clashes broke out at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound - one of Islam's holiest sites - on May 7 after Zionist forces moved in on worshippers. This followed a crackdown against protests over planned expulsions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Zionist-annexed east Jerusalem.

The Zionist police said a car-ramming attack in Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday wounded seven police officers, and that Zionist forces had killed the attacker. Guterres warned that the fighting could "unleash an uncontainable security and humanitarian crisis and .... further foster extremism, not only in the occupied Palestinian territory and (the Zionist entity), but in the region as a whole". - AFP