Countries worldwide have appealed for calm after days of unrest spiralled into retaliatory attacks by Israel and Palestinians.
The US, the European Union and the UK have urged Israel and the Palestinians to lower tensions as soon as possible.
The violence escalated on Monday night after Palestinian militants fired rockets towards Jerusalem.
In response, the Israeli military launched air strikes against militant targets in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian health officials in Gaza said 22 people, including nine children, had died in the strikes. Israel’s military said at least 15 members of the Hamas group that rules Gaza were among those killed.
Hamas had threatened to strike after hundreds of Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli police at a holy site in Jerusalem on Monday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas had “crossed a red line” and that Israel would respond “with great force”.
The past few days have seen the worst violence in Jerusalem for years, with confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters at a holy compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The clashes came amid mounting Palestinian anger over the threatened eviction of families from their homes in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers, fuelled by a month of altercations between protesters and police in the predominantly Arab part of the city.
Early on Tuesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent, a humanitarian group, said more than 700 Palestinians had been injured in clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem and across the West Bank.
Bombardments did not abate overnight as the sound of Palestinian rockets and Israeli air strikes echoed across the region on Tuesday morning.
Israel’s military said it carried out strikes on 130 targets across the Gaza Strip. In one strike, a woman was killed and two others were injured, health officials said.
Meanwhile, Hamas fired at rocket barrage at the city of Ashkelon in southern Israel. It said this was retaliation for an Israeli attack on a civilian apartment block near Gaza city.
A Hamas source told the BBC on Tuesday morning that more than 300 rockets had been fired from Gaza in the last 12 hours.
What’s the global reaction?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Hamas must end the rocket attacks “immediately”, adding: “All sides need to de-escalate.”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki echoed those calls, saying US President Joe Biden was seriously concerned about the violence.
In a tweet, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the rocket attacks “must stop”, calling for “an end to targeting of civilian populations”.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the “significant upsurge in violence” in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem “needs to stop immediately”.
Source: BBC
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