Israel claims to have ‘neutralized’ Islamic Jihad leaders in Gaza

The Israeli army assured Saturday August 6 to have “neutralized” the Chiefs “military” of the Islamic Jihad group in Gaza, during operations which, according to the authorities of the Palestinian enclave, left twenty-four dead, including six children. In the evening, Oded Basiok, the head of the operations department of the Hebrew State army, sent a press release to Agence France-Presse (AFP) in which he affirms that “the top leadership of the Islamic Jihad’s military wing in Gaza has been neutralized”.

“The battle is only just beginning”, said earlier Mohammed Al-Hindi, a leader of this armed group which fires rockets at Israeli soil. According to an updated toll, the health ministry in Gaza also claimed 215 people had been injured.

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The Israeli authorities contradict this assessment and assure that several Palestinian children were killed on Saturday evening in Jabaliya (north) by a failed rocket attack from Islamic Jihad towards Israel. ‘Israeli security forces have not struck Jabalia in recent hours’Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s office said in a statement.

The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it was preparing for ” one week “ raids on Gaza, targeting the Islamic Jihad, which she said killed fifteen fighters. Among them, a commander-in-chief, Tayssir Al-Jabari.

Egypt as a possible mediator

This new confrontation, which began on Friday, is the worst between the Jewish state and armed organizations in Gaza since the May 2021 war, which in eleven days left 260 dead on the Palestinian side, including combatants, and fourteen dead in Israel, including a soldier, according to local authorities.

Egyptian sources told AFP that Cairo, a historic intermediary between Israel and the armed groups in Gaza, was trying to establish a mediation. During a speech, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said he was working ” tirelessly “ to restore calm. But on the ground, the exchange of fire continued in the night from Saturday to Sunday, according to AFP journalists in Gaza. Israel does not lead “no negotiations for a ceasefire at the moment”said an Israeli military spokesman.

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The Israeli army began striking the enclave of 2.3 million people under blockade on Friday as part of a “preemptive attack” against Islamic Jihad, she said. In retaliation, about 400 projectiles – rockets and mortar shells – have been launched in the past 24 hours from Gaza, according to an Israeli official. Most were intercepted by the missile shield, the army said, and two people were lightly injured by shrapnel, rescue workers said.

Sirens in Tel Aviv

View of Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean coast, on August 6, 2022.

Saturday afternoon, warning sirens sounded in the Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv for the first time since this new escalation. The hostilities have already deprived Gaza, a small strip of land wedged between Egypt, the Mediterranean and Israel, of its only power station. She ” stopped [de fonctionner] due to shortage” of fuel, the electricity company said on Saturday. The Jewish state has sealed off border crossings in recent days, effectively interrupting diesel deliveries. The UN humanitarian affairs coordinator (OCHA) in the Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, called for allowing entry into the enclave for “fuel, food and medical supplies”.

It was the arrest of an Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank earlier this week that led to this new confrontation. 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.

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Israeli forces also arrested in the West Bank, territory occupied since 1967 by the Jewish state, nineteen members of the group considered terrorist by Israel, the United States and the European Union. After the first raids, Islamic Jihad accused the Jewish state of having “started a war”.

For Yaïr Lapid, it is a “precise counterterrorism operation against an immediate threat”that of the Islamic Jihad, “an auxiliary of Iran” wanting “killing innocent Israelis”. In 2019, the death of an Islamic Jihad commander in an Israeli operation had already given rise to several days of deadly exchanges of fire. Hamas, which has fought Israel in four wars since taking power in 2007, kept its distance.

The World with AFP

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