JERUSALEM — Israel carried out more airstrikes in Gaza early Friday, killing one Palestinian, as militants fired more rockets into southern Israel.
Tensions flared after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Thursday killed two Palestinians whom the military described as terrorists involved in a plot to attack Israelis.
Seven Palestinians, including two women and several children, were wounded when Israeli fighter jets attacked at least two targets on Friday that were described as training sites for the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. A strike on a site in northern Gaza badly damaged a house nearby, killing an elderly man and wounding other family members, according to Adham Abu Selmia, a spokesman for the Gaza medical services.
On Thursday, a missile struck a car in which the two men were traveling along a busy street during the afternoon rush hour, near a public park and several banks. Six bystanders were reported wounded.
The rockets fired into Israel on Thursday and Friday landed in open areas and caused no casualties, the Israeli police said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the main target of Thursday’s strike was Essam al-Batsh, 43, a senior operative of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group in Gaza nominally associated with Fatah, the party led by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. The military said that Mr. Batsh had been involved in numerous attacks on Israel from across the border with the Egyptian Sinai, including a suicide bombing in the Israeli resort of Eilat in 2007 in which three Israelis were killed.
Israeli security forces have been on high alert in recent days in the area along the Egyptian border because of intelligence warnings of an imminent attack. In August, gunmen who crossed into Israel from Sinai killed eight Israelis and wounded more than 30 in multiple attacks north of Eilat, the most serious assault on Israel from Egyptian territory in decades. Five Egyptian security personnel were subsequently killed by Israeli forces as they pursued the attackers, severely straining Israeli-Egyptian relations.
The second Palestinian killed in Gaza on Thursday was a relative of Mr. Batsh and a member of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. On Wednesday, an Islamic Jihad militant was killed in an Israeli bombing to the east of Gaza city.
The previous spike in violence came in late October when Israel killed nine Palestinians who were members of Islamic Jihad in several airstrikes in Gaza; the Israelis attacked as the militants were preparing to fire rockets into Israel, according to the Israeli military. Islamic Jihad and other smaller groups fired barrages of rockets at southern Israel, killing an Israeli man.
Egypt and Hamas then pressured the smaller militant groups to halt their rocket fire, restoring a fragile cease-fire. But the relative calm has since been punctuated by occasional rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes.
In another development, Hamas officials in Gaza denied reports this week that most Hamas personnel had left Damascus, Syria, where the group has its headquarters, under pressure from moderate Arab states like Egypt, Qatar and Jordan to increase the isolation of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
A Hamas official in Gaza said that the leadership was remaining in Syria, but that some of the organization’s members may have left out of fear for their safety because of the unrest there. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of relations with Syria and other Arab governments.
And in a move that could increase Israeli-Palestinian tensions, Jerusalem’s city engineer issued an order on Thursday for closing within a week a rickety footbridge leading to the holy compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, which houses Al Aksa Mosque. The engineer, Shlomo Eshkol, wrote in a letter to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Israeli body responsible for the Western Wall plaza below the compound, that the wooden bridge posed an immediate danger because it was flammable and could collapse.
The bridge, known as the Mugrabi ramp, was erected as a temporary measure in 2004 to replace an older ramp that had collapsed in bad weather. Jerusalem City Hall issued a building permit this year for a new permanent ramp, similar to the original one, but the demolition of the temporary ramp was delayed last month at the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was concerned about fomenting a popular backlash in the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Jordan.
Control and sovereignty over the holy site, located in the Old City in territory captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 war, is one of the most contentious and intractable issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any slight change in the delicate status quo that prevails in the area has the potential to set off unrest.
Muslim worshipers access the Aksa compound through a different entrance. The Mugrabi gate is used by non-Muslims, mostly Israelis and tourists, and the Israeli security forces.
The Muslim authorities and Palestinian officials condemned the imminent closing of the bridge, saying that it was in occupied territory and that any construction there should be the responsibility of the Muslim religious authorities, not Israel. Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority government, said by telephone that the closing may be a prelude to demolition, and that it was “provocative.”
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