Netanyahu speech interrupted as rockets fired at southern Israel



TEL AVIV, Tamara Zieve (dpa)- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was evacuated while delivering an election campaign speech on Tuesday night in the city of Ashdod, where sirens rang out after two rockets were launched into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.




Sirens also sounded in the city of Ashkelon.
The Israeli army said both rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome aerial defence system.
Emergency service Magen David Adom said it had taken a 46-year-old woman to hospital as she was suffering from shock.
Netanyahu's campaign event resumed after the sirens had stopped sounding.
No group in Gaza initially claimed responsibility for the rockets.
Earlier Tuesday, Netanyahu made an announcement near Tel Aviv in which he said that if he wins next week's election he will annex the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea in the West Bank.
Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the radical Islamic Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip, accused Netanyahu of "searching for the right-wing votes throughout selling his audience illusions that he would keep the occupation of our land forever.”
Qassem stressed that “the Palestinian people will continue their struggle until they kick the occupation out of their lands and establish their independent state.”
Israel experiences regular rocket attacks from Gaza, which has been controlled by Hamas - listed by the US and the EU as a terrorist organization - since 2007.
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Tuesday, September 10th 2019
Tamara Zieve (dpa)
           


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