[Source: BBC News]
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 24 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army is a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
Six youths and several PIJ fighters, in addition to leader Tayseer Jabari, are among the dead.
Some three hundred Palestinian rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel since Friday, an Israeli official said.
Israel says it introduced the operations of an “immediate threat” from the PIJ.
The latest violence is the highest serious outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza since an 11-day standoff in May 2021 that left more than two hundred Palestinians dead and a dozen Israelis dead.
The Israeli military warns that this new operation, codenamed Breaking Dawn, may last only a week.
In addition to the airstrikes in Gaza, some 19 PIJ members were arrested in raids in the occupied West Bank, on Israel.
The warning siren about the arrival of missiles continued to sound in Israeli cities on Saturday, amid new reports of airstrikes in Gaza.
The Gaza ministry blamed “Israeli aggression” for the deaths of Palestinians and 203 wounded.
But so far, Hamas, the region’s largest militant organization, which has an ideology similar to that of Islamic Jihad and coordinates its movements with it, does not appear to be firing with its vast arsenal of rockets.
As a result, there are no reports of Israeli airstrikes by Hamas, which would mark an escalation of violence.
Hamas issued strong statements on Friday night saying the “resistance groups” were united. But because he rules Gaza, he has his own practical considerations that would possibly save him from getting more involved.
Hamas’s calculations can simply replace if, for example, the number of civilians killed in Gaza rises rapidly.
If he makes the decision to sign up for the fighting, it would temporarily be much more intense.
Life in the Palestinian territory has already become much more complicated last week after Israel closed its crossings with Gaza, fearing that Islamic Jihad would retaliate for the arrest of one of its leaders in the northern West Bank.
On Saturday, Gaza’s only power plant closed because it had secured fuel deliveries, a spokesman for the corporate force said.
Of the roughly 300 rockets and mortars that were allegedly fired from Gaza into Israel overnight, an Israeli official said about 70 were unsuccessful on Israeli territory and fell in the Gaza Strip.
The vast majority of those who arrived in Israeli airspace were intercepted through its Iron Dome missile defense system, causing no Israeli casualties, officials said.
Some 30 Islamic Jihad targets, two weapons garage facilities and six rocket production sites were reached, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. The movements injured more than 120 people, according to Palestinian fitness officials.
Referring to Friday’s initial attack, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Israel had carried out “an exact counterterrorism operation opposed to an immediate threat. “
The IDF said its strikes targeted sites connected to the PIJ, adding the Palestine Tower in Gaza City that hit on Friday through a loud explosion that let smoke escape from the building.
Speaking during a holiday in Tehran, the Iranian capital, PIJ Secretary General Ziyad al-Nakhala said: “We will respond forcefully to this aggression, and there will be a fight in which our other friends will win. “
“There are no red lines for this battle. . . and Tel Aviv will be the rockets of the resistance. “
The standoff largely follows Israel’s arrest of Bassem Saadi, believed to be the head of the PIJ in the West Bank, on Monday night.
He was detained in Jenin Domain as part of a series of ongoing arrest operations after a wave of attacks by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians that left 17 Israelis and two Ukrainians dead. Two of the attackers arrived from the Jenin district.
The IDF discovered illegal weapons and a large sum of cash in his home. We know from the intelligence that percentage the details, we know that they have PIJ agents in Gaza near the border looking to attack Israeli civilians.