A woman has been killed in the city of Holon, south of Tel Aviv, as a volley of rockets was fired towards the city, the Israeli police said on Tuesday. A local ambulance service previously told Sputnik that three people, including a child, had been injured near Tel Aviv, APA reports quoting Sputnik..
Meanwhile, Channel 20 reported that one person in Rishon LeZion died as a result of the rocket attacks.
A Sputnik correspondent earlier reported that the air raid sirens went off in Tel Aviv as dozens of rockets could be seen being intercepted in the sky by the Iron Dome missile defence system.
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A 13-storey residential block in the Gaza Strip collapsed on Tuesday night after being hit by an Israeli air strike, witnesses said, and three people were wounded in a retaliatory rocket attack from Gaza on Tel Aviv, APA reports quoting Reuters.
Video footage showed three plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the Gaza tower, its upper storeys still intact as they fell. The building houses an office used by the political leadership of the enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas.
Electricity in the surrounding area went out, and residents were using flashlights.
Shortly after the attack, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group said they would respond by firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
Air raid sirens and explosions were heard around the city, and the skies were lit up by the streaks of multiple interceptor missiles launched towards the incoming rockets.
Pedestrians ran for shelter, and diners streamed out of Tel Aviv restaurants while others flattened themselves on pavements as the sirens sounded. Israeli television stations said three people had been wounded in the suburb of Holon.
The Israel Airports Authority said it had halted take-offs at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport "to allow defence of (the) nation's skies".
The U.S. State Department urged restraint on both sides.
"We are now carrying out our promise," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement. "The Qassam Brigades are launching their biggest rocket strike against Tel Aviv and its suburbs, with 130 rockets, in response to the enemy’s targeting of residential towers."
Hours earlier, Israel had sent 80 jets to bomb Gaza and massed tanks on the border as rocket barrages hit Israeli towns for a second day, deepening a conflict in which at least 28 people in the Palestinian enclave and two in Israel have been killed.
Residents of the block and people living nearby had been warned to evacuate the area around an hour before the air strike, according to witnesses, and there were no reports of casualties two hours after it collapsed.
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