05:06 PM
Friday, January 27, 2023
Gaza / Ramallah – (DPA):
Today, Friday, the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza claimed responsibility for the “rocket fire” from the Strip on southern Israel in response to the “escalation” in the West Bank.
Jihad leader Khaled al-Batsh said during a demonstration in Gaza, “As an embodiment of our battle for the unity of the arenas here in Gaza, the al-Quds Brigades (the movement’s military wing) responded last night with missile strikes.”
Al-Batsh added, “Our guns are present in every battlefield and our swords have not been sheathed,” stressing that “the resistance today has drawn in all arenas the features of the next stage.”
For its part, Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, published video clips of its air defenses’ response to Israeli warplanes over the Gaza Strip with surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft missiles.
At dawn on Friday, Israeli warplanes launched at least three raids on the Gaza Strip, in which gunmen responded by firing rocket-propelled grenades at southern Israel.
Palestinian security sources and eyewitnesses said that the Israeli aircraft targeted, with a number of missiles, three sites of armed groups in the center and north of the Gaza Strip.
The sources pointed out that the raids led to the sound of huge explosions and material damage, but no injuries were reported.
The Israeli army said that it had targeted, in one of the raids, an underground site belonging to Hamas, which is dedicated to producing rockets in the central Gaza Strip, holding the movement “responsible for everything that happens from Gaza.”
During the raids, Israeli sources said that several rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, which were intercepted by Iron Dome, while two shells fell in an open area.
At midnight last night, the Israeli army announced that it had intercepted two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip towards the city of Ashkelon. No Palestinian party has claimed responsibility for that.
This development came after 10 Palestinians were killed yesterday, Thursday, by Israeli army bullets in the West Bank, including 9 in a military operation that involved armed clashes with armed Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp.
This is the largest daily outcome of tension in the West Bank for several months, at a time when the number of Palestinian deaths has risen since the beginning of the year
30 killed by the Israeli army.
In the meantime, the armed groups, Den of Lions, announced that they had claimed a shooting attack at dawn today towards an Israeli military point in the vicinity of Nablus, in the northern West Bank.
Palestinian sources said that dozens of Palestinians were injured Friday afternoon by metal and rubber bullets and suffocated, during clashes with the Israeli army in separate areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
