Hamas launches mass rocket attack on Israel’s Ashkelon city after telling locals to leave or die

Hamas today launched a barrage of rockets at the port city of Ashkelon – hours after the terrorists warned Israeli civilians living there to leave before 5pm or die in response to the airstrikes aimed at the Gaza strip. 

A series of rockets were fired at the city in southern Israel just after 5pm local time (3pm UK time), with residents being urged to shelter from the onslaught. 

Air raid sirens were heard across the city, with footage showing frantic parents picking up their young children before sprinting into an airport to take cover from the rocket attack. 

Hamas’ armed wing had warned residents of the city to leave before 5pm Israeli time or face death in response to the Israeli airstrikes that have destroyed thousands of Hamas targets and killed 770 Palestinians.  

It comes after Israel warned Hamas they had ‘nowhere to hide’ and that its air force was launching ‘extensive attacks’ on the Palestinian terrorist group every four hours in revenge for its deadly surprise incursion that saw more than 1,000 Israelis slaughtered.

Israeli forces have already used its strike force of 600 planes and 300 rocket launchers to relentlessly pound the Gaza strip. 

‘We will reach them everywhere,’ military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to obliterate Hamas. 

Netanyahu, who first came to power in Israel in 1996 and has served three separate terms, compared Hamas to the Islamic State group and said Israel planned to deploy ‘unprecedented force’ that would ‘reverberate for generations’.