Israeli forces expanded their offensive against Islamic Jihad on Saturday. Twenty people were arrested by Shin Bet soldiers and security service agents during operations on Saturday morning in the West Bank, “including 19 members associated with the Palestinian terrorist organization Islamic Jihad”, the official said. Israeli army in a statement.
Israel has been carrying out strikes on the Gaza Strip since Friday afternoon, and Islamic Jihad has sent rockets into the Jewish state.
“Preemptive Attack”
Israel presented the raids as a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against Islamic Jihad, days after the organization’s leader was arrested in the occupied West Bank over fears of retaliatory action, 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 to have killed 15 fighters of the Islamic Jihad in its strikes which began Friday afternoon, targeting in particular sites of manufacture of weapons, according to it. The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported ten dead, “including a five-year-old girl”, and 79 injured.
“More than a hundred rockets” launched in retaliation towards Israeli soil
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.