The Israeli occupation forces renewed their missile strikes on the Gaza Strip, today (Friday), after hours of cautious calm in Gaza, and the Israeli army announced raids on several sites in the Strip, at a time when Iron Dome intercepted several missiles launched from Gaza, without causing any injuries. Eyewitnesses reported that several rockets were fired from the Strip after a 13-hour calm, while warning sirens sounded in areas near the outskirts of Jerusalem, according to official Israeli media.
On the other hand, the Israeli army bombed several sites in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Yesterday evening, the Israeli forces announced that they had continued bombing military installations belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement in the Gaza Strip. It noted in a statement that since May 9, the movement had launched 866 missiles at Israel, 260 of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system. The Israeli army responded by bombing 215 targets in the Strip.
The military escalation coincided with the continuation of the Egyptian mediation regarding the calm, after a security delegation from Cairo arrived in Tel Aviv yesterday, and a delegation from Jihad arrived in Egypt. Close sources revealed that Cairo seeks to reach a truce within 48 hours, despite the Israeli escalation with the assassination of the leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the movement, Ahmed Abu Daqqa. The Islamic Jihad movement responded by firing new missile barrages, prompting Egypt to announce that the mediation had not yielded results so far, warning of the consequences of continued escalation.
The latest round of escalation was on May 2, following the killing of prisoner Adnan Khader in Israeli prisons after 3 months of hunger strike, and Israel’s refusal to hand over his body to his family, which prompted the factions to launch dozens of rockets towards the Palestinian territories, followed by the round of May 9. When the Israeli forces assassinated a number of Jihad leaders, and the one in charge of the missile unit, Ali Ghali, and Abu Daqqa.
