World News | Israel kills another militant commander in Gaza as Cairo continues efforts to broker truce

GAZA CITY, May 11 (AP) — Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip killed a fourth militant commander Thursday, the Israeli military said, as the death toll among Palestinians in the latest outbreak of fighting rose to 26. .

Rocket fire into southern Israel continues despite Egypt’s continued efforts to broker a ceasefire.

Read also | The Vatican has officially recognized as martyrs the 21 Coptic Orthodox workers who were beheaded by ISIS in Libya and has instituted a festival in their honor.

It was the fiercest fighting between Israeli and Palestinian militants in Gaza in months, and women and children were among the dead.

The fire comes amid heightened tensions and a spike in violence in the occupied West Bank over the past year.

Read also | Dutch horror film: Man puts 101-year-old father’s body in freezer for 18 months, says ‘I’ll miss him’; accused arrested.

Earlier Thursday, the Israeli military launched a strike against the Islamic Jihad militant group and said Ali Gali, a senior commander in charge of the group’s rocket-firing unit, was killed when his apartment was hit.

Later in the day, Israel said it had killed another Islamic Jihad commander who was due to succeed Ghali in southern Gaza, a claim that could not be immediately confirmed.

Gaza’s health ministry said 26 people had been killed since the fighting broke out.

Army spokesman Major General Daniel Hagari told Israel Army Radio that two other militants were also killed in the early morning attack, although no group immediately acknowledged them as members and the rest of the building was intact.

“Apartments were targeted in a very precise way,” Hagari said. “I hope this will reduce, counter and destroy Islamic Jihad’s rocket capabilities.”

The attack targeted the top floor of a residential complex built by Qataris in the southern Gaza Strip. A pre-dawn airstrike in the city of Khan Younis damaged three surrounding buildings.

Known as Hamad City, the complex consists of several high-rise buildings and thousands of housing units. The strike caused panic among residents, with debris and broken glass strewn across the streets.

“My children started crying. I didn’t see anything because of the dust, broken glass and debris,” said Abdulrahmed, who lives across from the targeted building.

Islamic Jihad said Ghali was the commander in charge of its rocket force and a member of its militant group’s decision-making body. The group says it will only have a ceasefire if Israel agrees to stop the targeted killing of its fighters.

After intense fighting on Wednesday, when rockets rained down on southern and central Israel and airstrikes hit Gaza, a state-run Egyptian television station announced that Egypt, the frequent mediator between the two sides, had brokered a ceasefire.

But it was unclear how the talks were going as the violence continued into Thursday.

The Israeli military said it targeted the militants with so-called precision strikes in strikes against about 150 targets. But children, including a 4-year-old, were also killed.

A quarter of the rockets fired in this round of fighting landed in the Gaza Strip, killing at least four people, including a 10-year-old girl, two 16-year-old Children and a 51-year-old man. The claim could not immediately be independently confirmed.

Efforts to broker a ceasefire continued on Thursday when Mohamad al-Hindi, a top Islamic Jihad political bureau member, arrived in Cairo to discuss details.

According to Israeli media reports, a delegation of Egyptian mediators is also on their way to Israel, but Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said, “Despite our strenuous efforts, these efforts have not yet yielded the expected results.”

Israeli officials declined to comment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a prime-time televised speech on Wednesday that Israel had cracked down on militants. But he warned: “The round is not over yet.”

“We say to the terrorists and to those who send them: We see you everywhere. You cannot hide, we choose where and when we attack you,” he said, adding that Israel would also decide when calm would return.

Initial Israeli air strikes on Tuesday sparked an exchange of fire that killed three senior Islamic Jihad fighters at their home and killed at least 10 civilians – most of them women and children.

The Israeli military said its strikes were focused on Islamic Jihad armed infrastructure in the coastal enclave and would investigate any civilian deaths.

The attacks sparked a flurry of rocket attacks on Wednesday, prompting air strike alerts across southern and central Israel. Damage was reported as rockets hit empty buildings as residents fled the area.

The military said more than 500 rockets were fired at Israel. It said most were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense system or fell in open areas.

Israel said the air strike was in response to a barrage of rockets fired by Islamic Jihad last week in response to the death of one of its members on a hunger strike while in Israeli custody.

Israel has come under international criticism for high civilian casualties, including the wives of two militant commanders, some of their children and a dentist who lived with his wife and son in one of the targeted buildings.

In past conflicts, human rights groups have accused Israel of war crimes due to the high number of civilian deaths.

Israel said it would do its best to avoid civilian casualties and hold the militant group accountable for operating in densely populated residential areas. It also said militants fired rockets at Israeli neighborhoods indiscriminately.

The latest outbreak is the fiercest fighting the two sides have seen in months, bringing the region closer to all-out war.

But there were signs that both sides were trying to show restraint, with Israel avoiding attacks on the ruling Hamas militant group and only targeting the smaller, more militant Islamic Jihad group. Meanwhile, Hamas appears to remain on the sidelines.

Israel says it is trying to avoid conflict with Hamas, the more powerful militant group that rules Gaza, and is limiting the fighting to Islamic Jihad.

Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since the Islamic militant group took control of Gaza in 2007.

Islamic Jihad said on Wednesday it would continue to fire rockets.

As the rockets streaked across the sky, Israeli television showed footage of an air defense system intercepting the rockets over Tel Aviv.

In the nearby Ramat Gan suburb, people lay face down on the ground as they took shelter.

Video taken from the cockpit of an EL AL plane preparing to land near Tel Aviv early Thursday showed a flash of rocket interception over southern Israel.

Schools in southern Israel will remain closed and restrictions on large gatherings will remain in place until at least Friday, the military said. Residents were instructed to stay near the bomb shelter.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, where Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged over the past year, the Palestinian health ministry said a 30-year-old man was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Wednesday. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)