An Israeli airstrike killed a senior commander of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, the fighters said Sunday, their second leader to be killed amid an escalating cross-border conflict. The killing of Khaled Mansour, who led Iran-backed Islamic Jihad operations in the southern Gaza Strip, came a day after another Israeli strike killed a militant commander in the north. The fighting has already killed at least 29 Palestinians and seen rockets fired at Israel in the worst violence between Israel and Palestinian militants since the end of the 11-day war in 2021.
Meanwhile, tensions could escalate as Jews mark a holy day when ultra-nationalist Israeli lawmakers visit the sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Holy of Holies. Such visits can be a frequent source of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. The Islamic Jihad Al-Quds Brigades confirmed on Sunday that an airstrike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah killed Mansour and two other militants.
The militants said the attack also killed civilians as it leveled several houses.On Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry said 29 people, including six children and four women, had been killed in fighting in the coastal strip so far. According to her, at least 253 people were injured. Israel estimates its airstrikes have killed about 15 militants.Islamic Jihad militants continued to fire rockets into Israel, and the Israeli military continued airstrikes in Gaza, although the intensity of the exchange appeared to drop early on Sunday.
On Sunday, Jews marked Tisha B’av, a somber day of fasting that marks the destruction of the biblical temples and brings thousands to Jerusalem to pray. By early morning, Israeli police said several hundred Jews had already ascended the Temple Mount, or Noble Sanctuary. Police described the situation as calm as Jews held prayers at the Western Wall, which is considered the holiest place where Jews can pray.
In Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, Israeli security forces said they detained about 19 people suspected of belonging to Islamic Jihad during overnight raids. Israeli forces said their soldiers suffered no injuries in the airstrikes, in which Palestinians threw stones and improvised bombs and shot at their troops. The fighting began with Israel killing a senior Islamic Jihad commander in a wave of strikes on Friday that Israel said were aimed at preventing an imminent attack. For now, Hamas, the larger militant group that rules Gaza, appears to be staying on the sidelines of the conflict and keeping its response contained.
Israel and Hamas went to war barely a year ago, one of four major conflicts and several smaller battles over the past 15 years that have taken a staggering toll on the impoverished territory of two million Palestinians. The Israeli military said a stray rocket fired by Palestinian gunmen killed civilians, including children, in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya late Saturday night. The military said it had investigated the incident and concluded beyond doubt that it was caused by a firing failure by Islamic Jihad. There was no official Palestinian comment on the incident.
A Palestinian health worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters, said the blast killed at least six people, including three children. Israeli airstrikes killed a 75-year-old woman and wounded six others on Saturday as they prepared for a wedding. The airstrikes also destroyed several houses in the Gaza Strip, some of them belonging to members of Islamic Jihad. Gaza’s lone power plant shut down at midday Saturday due to a lack of fuel. Israel has kept its border crossings into Gaza closed since Tuesday. The new outage leaves Gazans with only four hours of electricity a day, increasing their reliance on private generators and deepening the territory’s chronic energy crisis amid peak summer heat.
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