Israel bombarded Islamic Jihad positions in the Gaza Strip for a third day Sunday as violence escalated, with 31 Palestinians reported dead and militants firing their first rockets at Jerusalem.
Six children were among those killed in the latest “Israeli aggression” since Friday, and 265 people have been wounded, said health authorities in the Islamist-run enclave where several buildings were reduced to rubble.
The fighting is the worst in Gaza since a war last year devastated the impoverished coastal territory, home to some 2.3 million Palestinians, and forced Israelis to seek shelter from rockets.
Israel pressed on with its aerial and artillery bombardment of positions of Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed group designated as a terrorist organisation by several Western nations, as the group has fired over 500 rockets in return.
The Israeli army has said the entire “senior leadership of the military wing of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza has been neutralised”, and Prime Minister Yair Lapid vowed Sunday that “the operation will continue as long as necessary”.
In Gaza, run by the Islamist group Hamas — who said Sunday they were “united” with Islamic Jihad, but have not joined the fray — the ministry said 31 people had died since the start of Israel’s “Operation Breaking Dawn”.
Israel said it had “irrefutable” evidence that a stray rocket fired by Islamic Jihad was responsible for the deaths of several children in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday.
