The escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip, where 29 Palestinians including six children died, continues this Sunday without sign of respite in this confrontation between the Islamic Jihad group and Israel, the most serious since a blitzkrieg last year. last.
Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets toward Jerusalem for the first time since hostilities began on Friday.
Warning sirens sounded in the morning in the Jerusalem area, the Israeli army announced, while AFP journalists in Jerusalem heard brief explosions in the distance.
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The day before, the alarms had gone off near the metropolis of Tel Aviv and the Islamic Jihad had confirmed having fired "
a major barrage of rockets
" in that direction.
This new confrontation is the worst between the Jewish state and armed organizations in Gaza since the May 2021 war which left 260 dead in eleven days on the Palestinian side, including combatants, and 14 dead in Israel, including a soldier, d 'after the local authorities.
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Raids and arrests
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, 29 people including six children have died and 253 have been injured since Friday in the enclave under Israeli blockade.
The Israeli authorities contradict this assessment and assure that Palestinian children were killed on Saturday by a failed rocket attack from Islamic Jihad towards Israel.
The Jewish state, which says it launched a “
preemptive attack
” targeting Islamic Jihad, claimed to have killed fighters and “
neutralized
” the leaders of the organization, which is considered terrorist by Israel, the United States and the 'European Union.
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Among the fighters killed are Tayssir Al-Jabari but also Khaled Mansour, whose death Islamic Jihad confirmed on Saturday during a strike on Rafah (south).
In total, it killed eight people, according to the Gaza Interior Ministry.
The Israeli army is preparing for "
a week
" of raids on the territory of 2.3 million inhabitants, she said, while the Islamic Jihad assured Saturday that "
the battle was only in its infancy
”.
It was the arrest of an Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank last Monday that led to this new cycle of violence.
Fearing reprisals, the Israeli authorities said they were launching an operation in Gaza, a micro-territory governed by the Islamist movement Hamas and where Islamic Jihad is well established.
On Saturday and Sunday, Israeli security forces also arrested around 40 members of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by the Jewish state since 1967.
power outages
Egypt, a historical intermediary between Israel and the armed groups in Gaza, is trying to establish a mediation between the parties.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi said on Saturday he was working "
relentlessly
" to restore calm, but on the ground the exchange of fire continued until dawn on Sunday, according to AFP journalists. in Gaza.
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Hostilities have already deprived Gaza, a small strip of land wedged between Egypt, the Mediterranean and Israel, of its only power station.
This has ceased to operate due to a shortage of fuel, the Jewish state having closed the border crossings with Gaza in recent days, effectively interrupting diesel deliveries.
Power cuts, already common in the enclave, have since multiplied, noted an AFP journalist on the spot.
Since 2007, Israel has imposed a strict blockade on Gaza, a micro-territory plagued by poverty and unemployment.
In 2019, the death of an Islamic Jihad commander in an Israeli operation sparked several days of deadly exchanges of fire between the armed group and Israel.
Hamas, which has fought the Jewish state in several wars since taking power in 2007, had kept its distance from the clashes.
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