GAZA CITY (AP) — Israeli airstrikes against insurgent targets in the Gaza Strip continued for a third day on Friday. The Palestinian death toll rose to 30, authorities said, as international mediators pressed ahead with their efforts to reach a ceasefire.
After the Palestinian Islamic Jihad insurgent group fired long-range projectiles into Israel on Thursday — shrapnel hitting homes and killing one — the Israeli army said its warplanes targeted militia rocket launchers. Residents in Gaza reported explosions in farms near the city of Rafah, in the south of the enclave. No casualties were immediately reported.
Despite sporadic Israeli attacks, the situation as of early Friday was relatively calm. Islamic Jihad did not fire any projectiles overnight, raising hopes that Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations could negotiate a truce.
Cross-border exchanges this week have pitted Israel against Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-biggest insurgent group after ruling Hamas. Israel said its airstrikes, which began on Tuesday, have killed five senior militia commanders. The group responded by firing more than 800 rockets into densely populated areas of Israel. In this time, the army said it hit at least 215 targets in Gaza, including rocket and mortar launching points and insurgents preparing to use them.
At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in the Strip as a result of the clashes, including seven children and four women, according to the UN humanitarian office. At least three of the children were killed by Palestinian shell misfires, the Israeli army and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said. More than 90 Palestinians have been injured, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported.
The deaths of civilians have provoked condemnation in the Arab world and concern in the United States and Europe. In the four wars it has waged against Hamas, Israel has faced repeated charges of war crimes due to the high number of civilian casualties and the use of heavy weapons in the crowded enclave. Israel, for its part, maintains that the Palestinian insurgency uses civilians as human shields.
Hamas, the de facto civilian government with an army of some 30,000 strong in Gaza, has tried to uphold its truce with Israel as it tries to prevent the dire living conditions in the territory from deteriorating after the devastating 11-day war in 2021. , in which more than 260 Palestinians were killed. The group, which took control of the enclave in 2007, has stayed out of the latest clashes, as happened last summer. In a sign of restraint, Israel limited its airstrikes to Islamic Jihad targets.
The two sides seemed on the verge of reaching a ceasefire before the violence on Thursday. The relative calm on Friday raised hopes of progress.
Hamas officials told reporters early on Friday that Egypt was stepping up its diplomatic efforts to end the fighting through “intensive contacts” with Hamas to Israel.
Islamic Jihad commanders have sent mixed signals about the contacts. Ihasan Attaya, a leading member of the group, lamented on Friday that the mediators “have not been able to offer us any guarantees.” One of the sticking points is the militia’s demand that Israel stop its targeted killings, he added.
This week’s incidents have relocated the conflict to Gaza after months of escalating violence in the occupied West Bank.
Israel carries out almost daily raids to detain suspected Palestinian insurgents in the West Bank who have killed at least 109 Palestinians so far this year, the worst in two decades. At least half of those killed were affiliated with insurgent groups, according to a count by The Associated Press. At least 20 people lost their lives in Palestinian attacks in Israel in the same period.
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DeBre reported from Jerusalem.