The escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip, where 31 Palestinians, including six children, have been killed since Friday, continues unabated in this conflict between the Islamic Jihad group and Israel, in the most serious crisis since last year.
Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets at Jerusalem for the first time since hostilities began on Friday. As many as 97% of rockets fired from Gaza were intercepted by Israel’s anti-missile defenses, according to the Israeli military.
The Jewish state, which says it launched a “preemptive strike” targeting Islamic Jihad, claims it killed militants and “neutralized” the leaders of the group, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
The main military leaders of the movement in Gaza, Taishir al-Jabari and Khalid Mansour, were killed, according to the army, which was confirmed by Islamic Jihad.
According to the health ministry in Gaza, 31 people, including six children, have died and 265 have been injured in the past two days in the Palestinian enclave under Israeli blockade.
Israeli authorities dispute this assessment and assert that Palestinian children were killed on Saturday by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket attack on Israel.
Alarm sirens sounded in the Jerusalem area today, according to the Israeli military, while AFP journalists heard explosions in the distance.
The rocket launches came as hundreds of Israelis gather in the Old City for a Jewish holiday, sparking fears of violence as nationalists march towards Temple Mount, also known as the Temple Mount.
An AFP photographer was briefly detained by Israeli forces while covering a far-right MP’s visit to Mosque Square.
Hamas, an Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2007, warned in a statement against these Israeli “raids” that could lead to an “uncontrollable” situation.
“The resistance” is “united in the fight” against Israel, assured Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, an organization that has waged many wars against the Jewish state but has so far not taken part in this armed conflict.
The escalation of violence in recent days between the Jewish state and armed groups in Gaza is the worst since the May 2021 war that left behind 260 dead in eleven days on the Palestinian side, including militants, and 14 dead in Israel , including a soldier.
“Every day we wake up to dead women and children,” said Abu Mahmoud al-Madhoun, 56, in Gaza City. “Every time an apartment or house is destroyed, people are killed, injured or displaced.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the operation in Gaza would continue for “as long as necessary”, calling the bombing that killed Khalid Mansour “an excellent result”.
That shelling in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, according to the Gaza interior ministry.
In Israel, two people were slightly injured by rockets, according to rescuers.
Power outages
The arrest of a leader of the group in the West Bank last Monday led to this new cycle of violence. Israeli authorities, saying they fear reprisals, carried out the first strikes on Friday in Gaza, where Islamic Jihad is entrenched.
About 40 members of the group were also arrested in the past two days in the West Bank, Palestinian territory held by the Jewish state since 1967.
Egypt, a historic mediator between Israel and the armed groups in Gaza, is trying to intervene to de-escalate the situation. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Saturday he was working “tirelessly” to restore calm, but on the ground, gunfire continued and residents remained holed up in their homes, according to AFP reporters in Gaza.
The only power station in the enclave of 2.3 million people has shut down due to fuel shortages as the Jewish state closed border crossings with Gaza in recent days, effectively cutting off diesel deliveries.
Power outages, common in the enclave, have multiplied since then, an AFP reporter noted.
Source: Capital
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