JERUSALEM • The Israeli military struck targets in the Gaza Strip early Friday, pushing the region closer toward a wider conflagration after a day of rocket fire along the country’s northern and southern borders following two days of unrest at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site.

At least two loud explosions could be heard in Gaza. It was not immediately clear what was struck.

The airstrikes came after militants in Lebanon fired a heavy barrage of rockets at Israel earlier in the day, forcing people across Israel’s northern frontier into bomb shelters, wounding at least two people.

In Gaza, militants also fired rockets toward Israel.

Israeli military officials said the rocket fire on both fronts was carried out by Palestinian militants in connection to this week’s violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City, where Israeli police stormed into the building with tear gas and stun grenades on two straight days. The violent scenes from the mosque have ratched up tensions across the region.

The airstrikes came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with his Security Cabinet to discuss the rockt fire. He vowed an “aggressive response.”

“We will strike our enemies and they will pay a price for every act of aggression,” he said, adding that Israelis remain united in the face of external threats despite their political differences.

There was no immediate Israeli response in Lebanon, where militants fired 34 rockets across the border. The military said 25 were shot down by its Iron Dome aerial defense system. Five rockets struck Israeli territory and the rest of the strikes were being investigated. Israel said two people were wounded.

An Israeli soldier guides a tank Thursday on the border with Lebanon after an intercepted rocket fired from Lebanon landed nearby in northern Israel.

The Associated Press