At least nearly one-third of Palestinians who died in the latest fighting between Israel and Gaza Strip militants died due to errant rockets fired by the Palestinian side, Israel’s military says.
Egypt’s ambassador to the United Nations tore into Israel during a Monday speech before the UN Security Council hours after Jerusalem heaped praise on Cairo for mediating a ceasefire with Palestinian Islamic Jihad that ended a three-day escalation in the Gaza Strip.
The entire senior leadership of the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group has been eliminated, an Israeli military official said in a statement late Saturday evening.
The Israeli Air Force struck a Palestinian Islamic Jihad “attack tunnel” in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Sunday morning, the military said, as Operation Breaking Dawn entered the third day.
The UN Security Council will hold an emergency closed-door meeting on Monday to discuss the latest escalation between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said in a statement.
The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday it was prepared for a “week of fighting” against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group in the Gaza Strip, as over 200 rockets were launched at Israel from the coastal enclave, with the central city of Modiin targeted as well as southern cities and towns.
Terrorists from Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired relentless barrages of rockets at Israeli communities in southern and central Israel Friday night, sending thousands rushing to shelters. The volleys came hours after the Israel Defense Forces launched strikes in the Strip in response to what Israeli leaders said was an ongoing “concrete” threat to target Israeli civilians and soldiers in Gaza-border areas.
The IDF launched Operation Breaking Dawn against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip on Friday evening, striking multiple targets belonging to the group and killed close to a dozen terrorist operatives including the head of the group in the northern part of the enclave. By late Friday night, over 100 rockets had been fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
The Israel Defense Forces accused Gaza’s Hamas terror group of building up military infrastructure in civilian areas and adjacent to schools, mosques and businesses Wednesday, in an apparent bid to pre-emptively justify collateral damage from any future strikes in the densely populated enclave.
The IDF on Saturday shot down three drones launched by Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah toward an Israeli gas platform, the Washington Times reports.
A southern Israeli court on Wednesday convicted an employee of the World Vision Christian charity on charges of diverting millions of dollars in donor funding to the Hamas terrorist organization which controls the Gaza Strip, CBN News reports.