Israeli forces expanded their offensive against Islamic Jihad on Saturday by announcing the arrest of 19 members of this armed organization in the West Bank and launching new strikes against it in Gaza.
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Twenty people were arrested by Shin Bet soldiers and security service agents during operations on Saturday morning, “including 19 members associated with the Palestinian terrorist organization Islamic Jihad”, the Israeli army said. in a press release.
Israel has been carrying out strikes on the Gaza Strip since Friday afternoon, and Islamic Jihad has sent rockets into the Jewish state.
Israel presented the raids as a “pre-emptive attack” against Islamic Jihad, days after the arrest of a leader of the organization in the occupied West Bank who had raised fears of retaliatory actions, an Israeli military spokesman said. , Richard Hecht.
Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed Islamist group, has a strong presence in Gaza and the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The Israeli army estimated that it had killed 15 Islamic Jihad fighters in its strikes that began Friday afternoon, targeting in particular weapons manufacturing sites, according to it. The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported ten dead, “including a five-year-old girl”, and 79 injured.
The Al-Quds brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, said they launched “more than a hundred rockets” on Israeli soil on Friday as a “first response” to Israeli strikes that killed one of the group’s leaders, Tayssir Al-Jabari. .
In Israel, no casualties or damage were identified by the rocket fire, the army reported. It reported 70 projectiles fired from Gaza, eleven of which landed inside the Palestinian enclave under Israeli blockade.
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 14 dead in Israel, including a soldier, according to local authorities.