Islamic Jihad announces truce after Israel-Gaza firefights

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement announced a truce on Wednesday, May 3, after exchanges of fire between armed groups in Gaza and the Israeli army. These clashes followed the death of a leader of the Islamist organization on hunger strike in an Israeli prison, Khader Adnane. Mediators in past confrontations Egypt, Qatar and the UN intervened to establish a return to calm, starting at 4 a.m. (3 a.m. Paris time), Islamic Jihad and Hamas sources told the AFP.

Israel did not immediately confirm this truce which seems fragile. The last warning sirens sounded in Israeli localities near the Gaza Strip around 5:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. Paris time), the army reported. According to witnesses in Gaza, several rockets were fired at Israeli soil at this time. The same night, Israeli strikes left one dead and five injured in the Gaza Strip.

“This cycle of confrontation is over, but the march of resistance continues and will not stop”said Tariq Salmi, spokesman for Islamic Jihad. “We stress, as we have told all the mediators who intervened, the need to hand over the body of the martyr Khader Adnane to his family”, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement on Wednesday. Originally from the occupied West Bank, Khader Adnane, 45, began a new hunger strike from the start of his incarceration on February 5 and died on Tuesday. He had been imprisoned many times by Israel and had gone on several hunger strikes, becoming a symbol for the Palestinians.