Booby-trapped kite also reportedly sent from Strip, amid recent wave of blazing kites flown across border, like reported by toi.com

A series of fires broke out on Monday in southern Israel, apparently as a result of flaming objects flown over the border from the Gaza Strip.

During recent clashes on the Gaza border, Palestinians have adopted a new tactic of sending blazing kites into Israel, sparking fires in nearby agricultural lands.

In a first, helium-filled balloons carrying flaming material were used to start a number of Monday’s blazes, according to Hebrew media reports.

As a result of the fires, hundreds of dunams (dozens of acres) of wheat fields were burned. There were no reports of injuries.

In addition to the flaming balloons sent over the border, a suspected booby trapped kite was reported to have landed near Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

Amid the increase in flaming kites being sent towards Israel, Israeli military aircraft struck a Hamas site in the northern Gaza Strip used as a launching pad for the incendiaries Saturday night.

The attack was in response to “terrorists launching burning incendiaries in an attempt to a cause fire in Israeli territory,” an army spokesperson said.

This was the first known case of the army striking a Hamas site in response to the kite firebombs, dozens of which have been launched in recent weeks.

The move comes after several Israeli reports that the army was considering ramping up its response to the kites, including targeting those launching them with lethal force.

The kite tactic was introduced as part of the weekly “March of Return” clashes at the border fence, an eight-week-long set of protests that began on March 30 and is due to continue until at least mid-May.

Though they were initially planned as non-violent demonstrations, the protests were co-opted by the Hamas terror group, which rules Gaza and whose leaders have said their goal is to erase the border and “liberate Palestine.”

Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar announced a military offensive to take from “terrorists” the city of Derna, the only part of the country’s east outside the control of his forces, like reported by arabnews.com.

“The zero hour has struck for the liberation of Derna,” said Haftar, declaring his troops had already started to crush the “bastions of terrorists” in the city.

Dressed in uniform, he was speaking from a military parade in the city of Benghazi in which thousands of soldiers from his self-styled army demonstrated their might.

Marshal Haftar celebrated the fourth anniversary since launching his “anti-terrorist” operation, which saw militants driven out of Benghazi — the home of Libya’s 2011 revolution.

It was his second public appearance after he returned to Benghazi two weeks ago following a long stay abroad, during which he was hospitalized in Paris.

Haftar said he had instructed his troops to spare the 150,000 residents of Derna, who have been under the control of the pro-Al-Qaeda militants called ‘ Mujahedeen Shoura Council’.
He said “peace efforts” aimed at avoiding clashes in Derna over the past three years had reached a “stalemate.”

While Haftar rules over eastern Libya, the rival Government of National Accord sits in the capital Tripoli and has the backing of the broader international community.
Haftar is accused by his rivals of wanting to establish a new military dictatorship in Libya.
Derna was known for being a bastion for militants even before the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

The city is the only part of eastern Libya to remain out of the control of Haftar’s Libyan National Army, which has the backing of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
In May 2017, Egypt carried out cross-border air strikes against militants in Derna in retaliation for a deadly attack on Coptic Christians.

Morocco cut diplomatic ties with Iran, accusing the Islamic republic of using its ally Hizbullah to deliver weapons to the separatist Polisario Front in Western Sahara, like reported by naharnet.com.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said the decision had nothing to do with “current regional or international developments”, referring to rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and its allies on one side and Shiite Iran its camp on the other.

The Lebanese Hizbullah quickly rejected Rabat’s accusations, blaming the decision on foreign “pressure”.

At a press conference in Rabat, Bourita said “a first shipment of weapons was recently” sent to the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, which is seeking independence, via an “element” at the Iranian embassy in Algiers.

“Morocco has irrefutable proof, names and specific actions to corroborate the complicity between the Polisario and Hizbullah,” he told reporters.

The decision to sever ties with Tehran is “in response to Iran’s involvement, through Hizbullah, in allying itself with the Polisario over the past two years in order to target the security and higher interests of Morocco”.

Bourita was speaking upon his return from Tehran, where he said he informed his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif about Morocco’s decision.

The foreign minister said he departed Tehran along with Morocco’s ambassador to Iran.

“I will ask the Iranian embassy’s charge d’affaires to leave the kingdom as soon as possible,” Bourita added.

– ‘False accusations’ -Morocco and Iran have had strained relations and severed diplomatic ties in the past, the last time in 2009 when Rabat cut ties with Tehran but they were restored at the end of 2014.

According to Bourita, Iran and Hizbullah have had ties with the Polisario Front since 2016, when the Lebanese Shiite group set up a committee to support the Polisario.

After that, he said, a Hizbullah military delegation visited the Polisario Front in the Tindouf area in southwest Algeria.

Washington, Riyadh and Israel have frequently condemned Iranian interference in the Middle East.

Iran and Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations in January 2016 and are engaged in a regional power struggle.

Both countries support opposing camps in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

The Polisario and Morocco fought for control of Western Sahara from 1975 to 1991, with Rabat taking over the desert territory before a UN-brokered ceasefire in the former Spanish colony.

Rabat considers Western Sahara an integral part of Morocco and proposes autonomy for the resource-rich territory, but the Polisario Front insists on a UN referendum on independence.

On Friday the UN Security Council backed a US-drafted resolution that urges Morocco and the Polisario Front to prepare for talks on settling the decades-old conflict.

It also renewed for six months the mandate of a UN mission that has been monitoring the ceasefire in Western Sahara since 1991.

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have been deadlocked since the last round of UN-sponsored talks in 2008.

Morocco maintains that negotiations on a settlement should focus on its proposal for autonomy for Western Sahara and rejects the Polisario’s insistence on an independence referendum.

Inspectors discover ‘powerful explosive device’ in truck at West Bank checkpoint; Liberman vows to ‘chase down the bastards‘

A large-scale terror attack planned for Independence Day had been averted after security officials arrested a Palestinian at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank on Wednesday with a “powerful explosive device” stashed in his truck.

The truck was stopped at the Reihan crossing by security inspectors, who found it also carried merchandise intended for use in Israeli settlements, with the bomb hidden “in its roof,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Police sappers were dispatched to defuse the bomb, the statement said.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praised the “vigilance and professionalism” of the Crossings Authority personnel, which “led to the exposure of an explosive device and to the thwarting of a large-scale terror attack on our 70th Independence Day.”

“We will chase down the bastards who planned to harm our celebration,” he wrote on Twitter, vowing to quickly lay hands on those responsible and bring them to justice.

Erez Zidon, head of the Defense Ministry’s Crossings Authority, said he was “proud of the inspectors who acted exactly as we would expect, first identifying the suspicious truck and then identifying the smuggling attempt, which turned to be an explosive device — probably meant for a terror attack during Independence Day.”

Earlier Wednesday, police arrested a Palestinian man at the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem after a search uncovered a knife on his person. The man, 32, a resident of Gaza who appeared to have been living in the West Bank, was interrogated by police. According to officials, in his initial questioning, he admitted that he had planned to carry out a stabbing attack.

Large parts of the West Bank are under closure until Thursday at midnight as Israel marks Memorial Day and celebrates its 70th Independence Day.

Egypt’s military says its forces have killed a man they identified as the leader of the Islamic State group in the restive Sinai Peninsula, like reported by foxnews.com.

Col. Tamer el-Rifai, a military spokesman, says in a Wednesday statement that Naser Abou Zaqoul has been killed in a shootout with troops in central Sinai. He did not elaborate.

The news came just days after the military said eight soldiers were killed and 15 wounded when militants wearing explosive belts blew themselves up as they tried to infiltrate a military base in central Sinai.

Egypt has been struggling to contain a long-running insurgency in Sinai. It launched a massive operation in February against militants in Sinai as well as parts of Egypt’s Nile Delta and the Western Desert, along the porous border with Libya.

The Moroccan-US joint military training, known as the African Lion Manoeuvres 2018, have been launched in Morocco under the orders of King Mohammed VI and will continue until April 29, like reported by middleeastmonitor.com.

A statement which has been issued by the General Command of the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces on Tuesday said that “Military units and observers from 15 countries representing Africa, Europe and North America are participating in the 15th session of these military trainings. The matter concerns Germany, Canada, Spain, France, UK, Greece, Italy, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Tunisia, as well as the United States of America and the Kingdom of Morocco.”

The statement explained that “The military training will include ground, air, airborne and tactical simulations trainings.”

The statement added that: “The military training will also include a formation in leadership activities and training on operations against violent extremist groups.”

According to the same source, “as part of the civilian military activities that are organised in parallel with the military trainings, dental medical services will be provided for the local population, in Tiznit, by medical teams involving doctors and nurses from the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces and the US Army.”

On the sidelines of the 2018 session of the African Lion Manoeuvres, a Moroccan-US air and naval manoeuvre is expected to be carried out, under the name of ‘Lightning Handshake in the Atlantic Ocean’ all along the Moroccan coasts.

According to the Moroccan newspaper Lakome on Tuesday, the frigate of Mohammed VI, the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, as well as war planes from both countries will especially participate in the Lightning Handshake manoeuvre.

The African Lion Manoeuvres and the Lightning Handshake air and naval manoeuvre are aimed at strengthening expertise and experience and strengthening cooperation and operational control among various forces.

The African Lion Manoeuvres are joint military training which have started in 2007 between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Morocco in the Tan-Tan Province of Morocco.

These training are aimed at strengthening military relations between Morocco and the United States of America and developing the field and combat skills of the participating forces.

They are also aimed at training in various terrains including desert, plateaus, valleys, stripes and areas close to the sea, that simulate the total terrains of the Sahara region and the majority of Arab countries.

The 2013 training programme was cancelled by Morocco in response to Washington’s efforts to submit a draft resolution to the Security Council to expand MINURSO’s mandate to include human rights monitoring in Moroccan Sahara and the Tindouf camps.

However, the US embassy in Rabat announced that the training resume after a UN settlement was reached.

The African Lion Manoeuvres come in this year amid an escalation between Morocco and the Polisario Front in the buffer zone in the Sahara, after Rabat accused the Polisario of trying to “change” the reality in the buffer zone, which is under the control of the United Nations, through transferring its military, administrative and civilian centres from Tindouf camps to the region.

Ahead of Israel’s Independence Day, the military was preparing for the possibility of a direct attack by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force in response to a strike on its air base in Syria earlier this month, The Times of Israel has learned.

Iranian officials have made increasingly bellicose remarks following the April 9 strike on the T-4 air base, near Palmyra in central Syria, which killed at least seven members of the IRGC, including the head of its drone program, Col. Mehdi Dehghan.

Iran, Syria, Russia and some US officials have all said explicitly that Israel was responsible for the strike. Israeli officials refuse to comment on the matter, though The New York Times quoted an Israeli military official as acknowledging that the Jewish state was behind the attack.

On Monday, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s retaliation against Israel will come “sooner or later” and that Jerusalem will “regret its misdeeds.”

“The Zionist regime should not be able to take action and be exempt from punishment,” spokesman Bahram Qasemi told reporters, according to Iranian news media.

Tensions rose again on Tuesday, as additional strikes were initially reported on two air bases in Syria, with the Syrian military claiming to have shot down incoming missiles. Later, the Syrian army clarified that no missiles had actually been fired, but claimed that its countermeasures were triggered by a joint Israeli-American cyberattack.

Israel’s defense establishment — the country’s various intelligence services and the military — believes an Iranian revenge attack would likely be carried out by the IRGC’s air force, with surface-to-surface missiles or armed drones, The Times of Israel has learned.

That would be a departure from previous clashes between Israel and Iran, in which Tehran’s reprisals were carried out through proxies, like the Hezbollah terrorist group, rather than by its own Revolutionary Guard Corps.

There was no indication of when such an attack might take place, though Independence Day festivities scheduled for Thursday may serve as a tempting target for Iran.

“The Israel Defense Forces will do everything to ensure that Independence Day passes quietly and that the citizens of Israel can enjoy the holiday. The IDF is prepared for a wide variety of scenarios so that the citizens of Israel can celebrate the 70th Independence Day properly,” defense officials told the Ynet news site.

In what could be seen as a not-so-subtle threat, a map was distributed to Israeli media outlets on Tuesday showing five Iranian-controlled bases in Syria — potential targets for the Israel Defense Forces if Iran does carry out reprisals.

These are Damascus International Airport, through which Iranian transport planes bring in weapons and military gear; the Sayqal air base; the T-4 air base; an airfield near Aleppo; and a base in Deir Ezzor, which was recaptured from the Islamic State terror group by the regime last year.

Israeli intelligence believes the sites are used by Iran for its missions in Syria, as well as to transport weapons to its proxies in the region.

Egypt’s parliament approved to extend the state of emergency for an additional three months, like reported by middleeastmonitor.com.

This is the fourth time that Egyptian authorities have extended the state of emergency since it was first imposed in April 2017 after two church bombings killed at least 45 people.

The decree, which came into effect on Saturday, had unanimous backing during the parliament session.

“In light of the circumstances Egypt has been facing, and in continuation of the efforts to root out terrorism, the government has decided to set a nationwide state of emergency for three months in accordance with a 2018 presidential decree,” a statement by the parliament read.

The move, the statement added, aimed to allow local security forces to “take [measures] necessary to confront the dangers and funding of terrorism and safeguard security in all parts of the country.”

The state of emergency allows the government to intercept and monitor all forms of communications, impose censorship and confiscate publications, impose a curfew or order the closure of commercial establishments, as well as designate areas for evacuation. It also allows security forces to detain people for any period of time without giving a reason as it is deemed a “security issue”.

Rights group have criticised Egypt’s emergency law, which they say is being used by the government to crackdown on journalists and opposition members.