Missile and rocket battles between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza resumed on Saturday after a relatively calm night with no breakthrough in Egyptian mediation efforts for a ceasefire .
In the early afternoon, the Israeli anti-aircraft defense went into action against dozens of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip after new Israeli airstrikes against this territory and against the funeral of Iyad al-Hassani, military commander of the Islamic Jihad killed the day before by an Israeli missile.
Since the start of an Israeli military operation against Islamic Jihad on Tuesday, 33 Palestinians have been killed in clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. An Israeli octogenarian was also killed on Thursday when a rocket exploded at her apartment building in Rehovot, central Israel.
In the northern West Bank, two Palestinian fighters from the armed wing of Fatah, the movement of the President of the Palestinian Authority, were killed on Saturday morning during an Israeli army raid on the Balata refugee camp, in Nablus.
Egypt, a traditional mediator between the belligerents, is working to obtain a truce that would put an end to the escalation of violence between Gaza and Israel, the most serious since August 2022.
According to a Palestinian source familiar with the talks, “Egypt presented [vendredi] a new formula for a ceasefire”, but no truce has been announced since then to put an end to this new escalation of violence between Gaza and Israel, the most serious since August 2012.
At midday, the Al-Quds Brigades, a military wing of Islamic Jihad, announced the continuation of their “missile fire on” Israeli cities “in the face of continued Israeli killings and bombings” of inhabited areas.
” Emergency “
Washington “strongly condemned” the firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza on Friday evening and “insisted on the urgency of reaching a ceasefire agreement”. Islamic Jihad is a “terrorist organization” both for the United States and the European Union, and for Israel.
As in previous days, residents of Gaza City are holed up in their homes, the streets are empty, businesses are closed, with the exception of a few pharmacies and supermarkets.
On the Israeli side, rocket warning sirens have sounded regularly since the beginning of the day in areas bordering the Gaza Strip where the population has been living in shelters since Tuesday.
Among the dead on the Palestinian side are six military commanders of Islamic Jihad directly targeted by Israel, as well as fighters from this movement, and others from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), another Palestinian armed group.
The United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday evening that it had confirmed the death of at least 13 civilians, including seven minors. The Israeli army claims that four civilians, including three minors, were killed by Palestinian rockets that fell on Gaza.
In total, according to the military, nearly 1,100 rockets were fired at Israel, of which about 300 were intercepted by the air defense system, which normally fires only when rockets threaten populated areas.
The Gaza Strip, a cramped territory undermined by poverty and unemployment where 2.3 million Palestinians live, has been subject to an Israeli blockade since the takeover of the Islamist movement Hamas in 2007. The territory has been the scene of several wars with Israel since 2008.
In August 2022, three days of clashes between Israel and Islamic Jihad had caused the death of 49 Palestinians, including at least 19 children according to the UN. More than a thousand rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, injuring three.