First Israeli Fatality in Ongoing Conflict With Islamic Jihad as Tensions Escalate
An 80-year-old woman was killed Thursday evening in a Palestinian rocket attack on Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, marking the first Israeli fatality in the ongoing conflict with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the Gaza Strip.
Four people were moderately injured and one was lightly injured in the same attack.
In other attacks on southern Israel, a foreign worker in the Eshkol Regional Council was moderately injured and a woman in her 80s was lightly injured when a rocket landed in a garden in the Sdot Negev Regional Council.
Twenty-eight Palestinians have been killed and at least 76 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip over the past three days. The conflict has also worsened tensions in the West Bank. Egyptian mediators have been working to broker a cease-fire, but so far their efforts have been unsuccessful.
Israeli airstrikes targeted and killed two militant commanders, Ali Ghali and Ahmed Abu Daqqa, on Thursday. Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, which Ghali and Daqqa belonged to, has declared it will only agree to a cease-fire if Israel stops targeted killings of its fighters.
While Israel claims that its precision strikes focus on Palestinian terrorists, civilian casualties have raised international concerns.
