The military leadership of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian armed organization, was “neutralized” in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said on Saturday (06.08.2022), following two days of offensive with bombings that claimed the lives of more than 30 people , including six children.
“The top leadership of the Islamic Jihad military wing in Gaza has been neutralized,” said the head of the army’s operations directorate, Oded Basik, in a statement sent to AFP.
More than 30 people, including six children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of a new wave of violence between Israel and the Islamic Jihad group, authorities in the Palestinian enclave said on Saturday.
In an updated balance sheet, the Gaza Health Ministry said that 32 people, including six minors, had been killed since Friday in Israeli attacks on Gaza and that 215 had been injured.
Five children and one adult were killed in the attack near a mosque in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian reports cited by the German news agency dpa.
Israel denies attack on Jabalia
The Israeli authorities refuted this information, assuring that several Palestinian children died on Saturday night in Jabalia (north of Gaza) by a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad towards Israel and not by its army.
“Israeli security forces have not attacked Jabalia in the last few hours,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s office said in a statement.
At a hospital in Jabalia, an AFP photographer saw the bodies of six people, including three children.
Israel alleges that its attacks, launched on Friday in a “preventive” manner once morest possible retaliation for the arrest of a leader of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, are directed once morest weapons manufacturing sites of that armed group.
The Israeli army said on Saturday that it “is preparing for a one-week operation.” “Currently there are no negotiations with a view to a ceasefire,” said a military spokesman.
Taysir al Jabari ‘Abu Mahmud’, one of the main leaders of Islamic Jihad, and a total of 15 fighters were killed in the bombings on Friday, according to Israel.
Islamic Jihad: battle is just beginning
The leader of the organization in Gaza, Mohamed Al Hindi, assured that “the battle has only just begun.”
Egyptian sources told AFP that Cairo, a historical intermediary between Israel and the armed groups in Gaza, was trying to establish mediation.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in a speech that he was working “tirelessly” to restore calm.
But on the ground, the exchange of fire continued into the night from Saturday to Sunday, according to AFP journalists in Gaza.
jc (afp, dpa)
