Hamas launched a massive barrage of rocket fire on southern and central Israel in the early hours of Wednesday morning, killing a man and his daughter and sending hundreds of thousands of people, from Tel Aviv to Beersheba, fleeing to bomb shelters.

The large-scale fusillade of rockets was apparently launched in response to the Israel Defense Forces destroying a nine-story building in Gaza City and killing two senior Hamas operatives in a targeted strike.

In response, the IDF launched strikes on upwards of 500 targets in the Gaza Strip, aimed at Hamas personnel, weaponry and infrastructure, Zilberman said.

Police said the victims were a father in his 40s and his seven-year-old daughter. The mother, who was also in the car, was seriously injured.

Lod Mayor Yair Revivo said the dead were members of the Arab community. “Hamas missiles do not differentiate between Jews and Arabs,” Revivo said.

He also appealed to Arab residents to end the protests and called for calm in the city. “The day after we will still have to live here together.”

In Tel Aviv, an 80-year-old man suffered an apparent heart attack while running for the shelter and was in a serious condition, medics said.

Another missile hit a house in the town of Yehud, just north of Ben Gurion Airport. Rescue workers say the family who lived in the house were saved by their bomb shelter. Pictures from the scene showed the house completely destroyed.

A house in Yehud that was hit by a rocket fired from Gaza on May 12, 2021 (United Hatzalah)

According to the IDF spokesperson, Israelis who have heeded the Home Front Command’s instructions and entered bomb shelters have been largely unharmed in the rocket attacks and most of the casualties in Israel were from people who didn’t or couldn’t reach a protected space.

Hamas said it fired over 200 hundred rockets during the assault, claiming it was in response to the IDF destroying a nine-story building in Gaza City.

The army said the building housed Hamas offices, including their intelligence center, their West Bank command and a propaganda department. The IDF warned inhabitants of the building to flee several hours before the attack.

The IDF also said it had killed two senior Hamas intelligence officers in a targeted strike.

“In a combined operation between the IDF and the Shin Bet security service about two hours ago, we eliminated key operatives from Hamas’s military intelligence system,” the IDF said in an early morning statement.

It identified the men as Hassan Kaogi, the chief of the security department in Hamas military intelligence and his deputy, Wail Issa, head of the military intelligence counterespionage department. It said that Issa was the brother of Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of the Hamas military wing.

The IDF spokesman said the military was also targeting the group’s rocket production and storage facilities, underground infrastructure and the homes and offices of Hamas leadership.

The rockets targeted a wide swath of Israel from Beersheba to the Sharon area north of Tel Aviv, the farthest north rockets have been fired yet.

Loud explosions were heard throughout the area as Iron Dome interceptors brought down most of the incoming missiles. The rockets were the second major assault on the Tel Aviv area in a few hours.

Earlier, a woman was killed and dozens were injured on Tuesday evening when Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip pummeled central Israel with a major rocket fusillade, in what appeared to be the largest-ever barrage aimed at the broader Tel Aviv area.

The massive attack caused Israel to briefly suspend flights at its major international airport and cancel schools Wednesday in all areas south of Herzliya.

Rocket sirens blared repeatedly throughout central and southern Israel on Tuesday evening, sending millions of Israelis rushing for shelter, as Gaza-based terror groups fired multiple long-range rockets from the coastal enclave toward Tel Aviv and its suburbs.

The Hamas terror group, which rules Gaza, claimed to have launched over 130 rockets in that volley. There was no immediate statement from the Israel Defense Forces on the number of rockets fired.

In the central city of Rishon Lezion, a woman was killed from a rocket strike. She was not immediately identified.

Rockets also hit the Tel Aviv suburbs of Holon and Givatayim, injuring at least eight people, some of them seriously, police said.

One rocket fell next to a bus in Holon, injuring four people, two of them seriously and two of them moderately. Medics said a five-year-old girl was among the wounded in Holon.

Firefighters near damaged vehicles in the city of Holon near Tel Aviv, on May 11, 2021, after rockets are launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

In nearby Givatayim, fragments of a rocket that was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system hit a house, lightly injuring four people inside, police said. A building in north Tel Aviv was also apparently hit.

Ben Gurion Airport temporarily stopped all air traffic and diverted flights to Cyprus. Flights were resumed less than two hours later.

The Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command had instructed all residents of central and southern Israel to enter bomb shelters during the attacks. The Home Front Command also ordered schools shuttered south of Herzliya Wednesday amid the rocket bombardments from Gaza.

A tank on fire on the Ashkelon-Eilat oil pipeline after a rocket strike from Gaza, May 11, 2021 (Channel 12 screenshot)

Separately, a large tank in Ashkelon belonging to the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline was hit by a rocket earlier Tuesday and has been on fire for several hours.

Firefighters have been working to douse the blaze, so far unsuccessfully.

There are fears that hazardous materials could be spread by the fire, Channel 12 reported. But the local fire chief said the fire does not pose a danger to local residents, and that firefighters expect to put it out by the morning.

Smoke billows from an Israeli airstrike on the Hanadi compound in Gaza City, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas terror group on May 11, 2021. (MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)

Israeli jets earlier on Tuesday evening destroyed a 13-story residential building in Gaza City, in a retaliatory airstrike to the hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza since Monday afternoon.

Prior to the strike, people in the building received several warnings, including phone calls and messages, telling them to leave, and a preliminary “roof-knocking” strike — using a small missile to strike the roof with minimal damage in order to cause all inside to leave before a major raid.

In videos from the scene, the building — which housed offices of several Hamas commanders — can be seen being enveloped in dense smoke before collapsing.

Hamas earlier on Tuesday threatened to launch long-range rockets at Tel Aviv should Israel continue airstrikes in residential areas.

It is not yet clear why Israel targeted the building. Channel 12 reported it apparently served as the home for many terror operatives, including some released by Israel during the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

After the rocket strikes on central Israel, Israeli forces destroyed the al-Jawharah high-rise in Gaza City, flouting additional threats from terror groups. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had previously said that such demolitions would lead to further rocket fire on Tel Aviv.

Earlier on Tuesday, two women were killed and dozens injured, including two seriously, when Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired massive barrages of rockets at southern Israel.

The deaths in Ashkelon marked the first fatalities in Israel in the round of fighting with Gaza terrorist groups that began Monday evening.

A heavily damaged house from rocket fire in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on May 11, 2021 (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

The deadly rocket attack directly struck a home where an elderly woman was sitting with her caregiver, 32-year-old Soumya Santosh. Santosh was killed while her elderly charge, 80, was hospitalized in serious condition, according to Hebrew media reports.

Channel 12 reported that the rocket shelter was at least a minute’s run away from the woman’s home and the pair did not manage to reach it in time. The home did not have a fortified room of its own.

According to the Haaretz daily, Santosh is survived by her husband and nine-year-old daughter.

The second victim of the Ashkelon rocket fire was not immediately identified.

A technical issue with an Iron Dome battery during the massive rocket barrage toward the coastal city on Tuesday afternoon prevented some rockets from being intercepted and may have been responsible for the casualties and deaths. The malfunction was repaired and the battery returned to being fully operational shortly after, Hebrew-language media reports said.

The Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon on Tuesday said that it treated 95 casualties, including two seriously wounded and two in moderate condition.

The Hamas-run health ministry said 32 Gazans were killed, including 10 minors, and 220 wounded in the ongoing escalation with Israel. Fifteen Gazans sustained serious injuries, according to ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra. Israel said more than half were Hamas fighters.

IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said a number of those killed in Gaza, including at least three children, were hit by errant rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists, not by Israeli airstrikes.

He said Israel was taking steps to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, but that they were liable to occur anyway as Hamas deliberately operates within a densely populated area, using the residents of the Strip as human shields.

Hamas, which is officially dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, took effective control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup. Since then, Israel has imposed a naval blockade on the enclave, as well as stiff control over what can enter the Strip, maintaining that it is necessary in order to prevent terror groups from smuggling weapons into the area.

Fire billows from Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, on May 10, 2021. (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Palestinian terror groups have tied the attacks to the unrest in Jerusalem connected to both prayer on the Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the pending eviction of a number of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israel has fought three large operations against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip since 2008, most recently in 2014 with a 51-day war known as Operation Protective Edge.

Judah Ari Gross and Aaron Boxerman contributed to this report

Two Israeli women were killed and dozens injured, including two seriously, when Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired massive barrages of rockets at southern Israel throughout Tuesday, drawing deadly retaliatory airstrikes from the Israel Defense Forces.

The deaths marked the first Israeli fatalities in the round of fighting with Gaza terrorist groups that began Monday evening, which has seen hundreds of rockets fired at Israeli territory.

The Hamas terror group claimed that at one stage on Tuesday it fired 137 rockets in around five minutes in an apparent attempt to overwhelm the Iron Dome missile defense system.

In a subsequent barrage on the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, less than an hour later, two women were killed by rockets in apparently separate hits. There were no immediate details on their identities.

Channel 12 reported that the deadly rocket attack directly struck a home where an elderly woman and her caregiver, who did not manage to get to a public shelter in time, lived. One of the women was killed, the network said, without identifying the victim.

Residents of the Ashkelon apartment bloc in which two women were killed by rocket fire from Gaza on May 11, 2021, speak to reporters outside the building (Channel 12 screenshot)

The network reported that the shelter is at least a minute’s run away from the woman’s home. The home did not have a safe room of its own.

The Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon said that it treated 74 casualties, including two seriously wounded and two in moderate condition. Forty-nine people received treatment for light injuries, with the remainder suffering from anxiety.

With a number of buildings in the city suffering direct hits over the course of the day, and concerns over the number of residential buildings without bomb shelters, the Israel Defense Forces instructed residents to remain in reinforced areas. The restriction was later lifted — followed, minutes later, by additional rocket alert sirens on the city.

Ashkelon Mayor Tomer Glam said some 25 percent of residents don’t have access to a protected area when rockets are fired at the city.

“It is impossible when normal life becomes a state of emergency within minutes,” he told Army Radio. “There are houses from the 1960s where there is no basic protection — it is time for treasury officials and decision-makers to understand what is happening here in the city.”

A picture shows a burnt vehicle in Ashkelon as rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

Hundreds of rockets were fired at Israel from Monday evening through Tuesday afternoon, many of which were intercepted by Iron Dome missile defense batteries while others fell short of their targets and landed inside the Strip.

Tuesday afternoon saw the rocket attacks shift slightly northward, with projectiles fired at Ashdod including a rocket that directly hit a residential building. Buildings were also hit in Ashkelon, including an empty school.

Israeli security forces at an Ashdod home hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (Flash90)

On Monday night, a rocket directly struck a house in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, damaging it but not injuring its occupants.

In the early hours of Tuesday, a missile hit a residential building in Ashkelon, wounding six Israelis, four of them members of the same family: parents in their 40s, an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old. The father was seriously hurt with a head wound, and the others  sustained light injuries from shrapnel.

The assaults continued Tuesday after a night of almost constant rocket fire on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip and as the IDF conducted strikes on more than 100 targets in the coastal enclave, as part of what it has called “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” the military said. The previous day saw a major outbreak of violence from Gaza, including rare rocket fire on Jerusalem, where Palestinians have been clashing with police for days.

The scene after a rocket hit Ashkelon, May 11, 2021 (Israel Police)

In response to the ongoing rocket rockets, IDF fighter jets, aircraft and tanks struck some 130 targets in the Gaza Strip, most of them associated with Hamas, but also some linked to other terror groups in the enclave, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups reported that several high-ranking commanders were killed in Israeli raids, including three top PIJ leaders in a drone strike on a building in the upscale Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City.

One of those killed was the brother of another top PIJ commander, Baha Abu al-Ata, who was killed in an Israeli strike in November 2019, kicking off a major round of fighting in the Strip. Islamic Jihad vowed revenge for the death of the three commanders in its armed wing, saying the response will be “harsh.”

The devastated Ashkelon apartment in which a woman was killed by rocket fire from Gaza, May 11, 2021 (Channel 12 screenshot)

Additionally, the IDF said it killed the head of Islamic Jihad’s special rocket unit, in an operation carried out in cooperation with the Shin Bet. Sameh Abed al-Mamluk was killed along with several other senior rocket officials, the army said.

According to the IDF, the military’s targets also included the home of a top Hamas commander, Hamas’s intelligence headquarters in southern Gaza, two attack tunnels that approached the border with Israel, rocket production and storage sites, observation posts, military installations and launchpads.

The IDF said it was also targeting terrorist operatives as they fired rockets or attempted to launch anti-tank missiles at Israel. On Monday, an Israeli man was lightly injured when Palestinian terrorists fired an anti-tank guided missile at his car.

A Palestinian man inspects the rubble of a partially destroyed residential building after it was said to have been hit by Israeli retaliatory strikes on the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, May. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Palestinian media also reported strikes around the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis and on an apartment building in the al-Shati camp near Gaza city. A building was also destroyed in Gaza City’s upscale Tel al-Hawa neighborhood.

The Hamas Health Ministry said 28 Gazans were killed, including nine minors, and 125 wounded in the ongoing escalation with Israel. Fifteen Gazans sustained serious injuries, according to Hamas Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra. Israel said more than half were Hamas fighters.

IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said a number of those killed in Gaza, including at least three children, were hit by errant rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists, not by Israeli airstrikes.

The mother of Palestinian Hussien Hamad, 11, is comforted by mourners during his funeral in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

The IDF spokesperson said Israel was taking steps to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, but that they were liable to occur anyway as Hamas deliberately operates within a densely populated area, using the residents of the Strip as human shields.

Israel on Tuesday showed no indications that it was interested in an immediate ceasefire, as Zilberman said the fighting was expected to last at least several days.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi on Tuesday afternoon gave the military a green light to keep targeting Hamas and PIJ members operating in the Strip and bombing sites connected to the terror groups’ rocket production and storage efforts.

Soldiers from the IDF’s Golani Infantry Brigade and 7th Armored Brigade were sent to the Gaza border as reinforcements and additional troops were called in to aerial defense, intelligence and air force units, the military said. The police said that eight reserve companies of Border Police would be called up to help deal with disturbances across the country.

Zilberman said the military was deploying additional air defenses throughout the country, notably in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Tel Aviv had yet to be targeted as of Tuesday afternoon, but the IDF suspected that rocket fire may be directed there as well.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the IDF would continue striking Hamas and other terrorists in the Strip until “long-term and complete quiet” is restored. Gantz also threatened Hamas’s leadership, saying its commanders would “be held responsible and pay the price for the aggression.”

In light of the ongoing rocket attacks, Gantz declared the area within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of the Gaza Strip to be under military control, giving the IDF the power to issue directives to civilians there. The IDF ordered schools closed in communities near Gaza on Tuesday and limited gatherings to groups of 10 people outdoors and 50 people indoors. Businesses would be allowed to open only if they had easy access to bomb shelters.

An overhead view of an Ashkelon home badly damaged by a rocket fired from Gaza on May 11, 2021. A man was seriously hurt in the attack. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

The military also limited gatherings in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and the Shfela region around Beit Shemesh to 30 people outdoors and 50 people indoors. Schools and businesses there could also only be opened if they had easy access to a bomb shelter. A number of cities in central Israel announced they were preemptively canceling schools on Tuesday as a precautionary measure.

Meanwhile, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said that the Strip’s sole power plant was running low on diesel fuel after Israel closed all of its crossings on Monday evening in response to the hundreds of rockets fired.

The coastal enclave normally receives most of its fuel through the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing with Israel, and according to the Gaza Electrical Company, one of the plant’s generators has already been turned off and the plant as a whole will likely shut down “soon” due to lack of fuel, threatening to severely restrict the number of hours of electricity Gazans receive.

Al-Qidra said that an electrical shortage would threaten the effectiveness of Gaza’s health care system.

“This will have a serious effect on public health and the health of our society,” al-Qidra said.

Hamas, which is officially dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, took effective control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup. Since then, Israel has imposed a naval blockade on the enclave, as well as stiff control over what can enter the Strip, maintaining that it is necessary in order to prevent terror groups from smuggling weapons into the area.

The military initially believed that Hamas was not interested in a large-scale conflict with Israel at this time, but that assessment changed over the past two days and the IDF began preparing accordingly.

Fire billows from Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, on May 10, 2021. (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Palestinian terror groups have tied the attacks to the unrest in Jerusalem connected to both prayer on the Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the pending eviction of a number of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israel has fought three large operations against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip since 2008, most recently in 2014 with a 51-day war known as Operation Protective Edge.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.