At 8.30 a.m. local time (5.30 GMT), as rocket warnings continued to sound in Israeli communities adjacent to the blockaded Palestinian territory, Gaza City was paralyzed, streets deserted and shops closed, after an AFP journalist on the spot.
The Israeli army continued until dawn its strikes across the enclave which targeted sites belonging to the Islamic Jihad, in particular of manufacture of weapons, according to it. Fifteen fighters were killed in the raids that began Friday afternoon, the army said, while Gaza authorities reported ten dead, including a five-year-old girl, and 79 injured.
Shooting from Gaza also continued, without causing any casualties or damage, according to the army.
The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds brigades, said on Friday after a salvo of more than 100 rockets towards Israeli soil that it was only a “first response” to the assassination of a of its leaders in an Israeli strike.
Overnight, Israeli forces also arrested in the West Bank, a territory occupied since 1967 by the Jewish state, 19 members of Islamic Jihad, an Islamist organization considered terrorist by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Egyptian mediation
It was the arrest earlier this week of a leader of the group in the occupied West Bank that led to this new armed confrontation. The Israeli authorities said they feared retaliatory actions from Gaza, a micro-territory governed by the Islamist movement Hamas and where Islamic Jihad is well established, and launched a “preventive attack”.
This is the worst confrontation between the Jewish state and armed organizations in Gaza since the eleven-day war in May 2021, which left 260 dead on the Palestinian side, including combatants, and fourteen dead in Israel, including one. soldier, according to local authorities.
Egypt, a historic intermediary between Israel and armed groups in Gaza, is working to mediate and could host an Islamic Jihad delegation this Saturday, Egyptian officials in Gaza said. Egyptian diplomacy had previously indicated that it was conducting discussions “relentlessly in order to calm the situation and preserve lives and property”.
letelegramme Fr Trans