A Palestinian armed group fired rockets towards Jerusalem on Friday for the first time in this week's wave of fighting, as Israeli air strikes killed another Islamic Jihad commander in Gaza, as Egypt tried to reach a solution and a ceasefire.

EDITED BY | TONY WILD

WORLD SECTION

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - 13 MAY 2023

   Shortly thereafter, Israel resumed air strikes on Islamic Jihadist killed in the Gaza Strip. The Jihad movement launched multi rockets towards Jerusalem, where  Sirens sounded in the city of Beit Shemesh and other areas in the hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem, ending a 12-hour lull. Explosions were heard briefly in Jerusalem, likely caused by Israeli missile defenses intercepting the missiles.

The Israeli army said that two rockets were fired towards the Jerusalem area, but did not confirm that they had been intercepted. Local media reported that the Israeli air defenses shot down the two missiles. Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip were again hit by rocket fire. There were no reports of injuries.

Shortly thereafter, Israel resumed air strikes on Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip.

A senior leader in the Islamic Jihad movement, Iyad al-Hassani, and his assistant were killed in an air strike that targeted an apartment in the Gaza Strip. Al-Hassani is the sixth member of the Military Council of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, to be killed by Israel this week.

The Israeli forces launched a campaign of air strikes targeting leaders of the Islamic Jihad Movement in the early hours of Tuesday morning, accusing the movement of planning to launch attacks on Israel.
The movement, which is the second largest armed group in Gaza after the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which runs the besieged strip, has fired about 1,000 rockets since then, some of them toward the Israeli rear.

Over the past three days, at least 33 Palestinians were killed in the densely populated Gaza Strip, including women and children, while one person was killed in Israel when a rocket hit an apartment in a suburb of Tel Aviv.

In the small coastal strip of Gaza, residents woke up to empty streets hoping to catch some breath after days of explosions.

* "Our lives stopped"

Amin Abu al-Khair has hope that he will return to open his fish restaurant after he closed it four days ago. "Our life has stopped. The sea is close to us, and we have stocks that we cannot sell. We hope to declare a truce," he said.

The Israelis are still on alert, but they risked a little distance from the shelters at the beginning of the weekend in order to prepare for the Jewish holy Saturday, after a lull for hours, they ran for cover again when the sirens went off and ended the calm for the rest of the morning.

The latest escalation came after more than a year of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, which since the beginning of this year has killed more than 140 Palestinians and at least 19 Israelis and foreigners, in what appeared to be a vicious circle of violence.

The Islamic Jihad movement rejects coexistence with Israel and seeks its destruction. The senior ministers of the national religious coalition government currently ruling in Israel also rejected the establishment of any Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967.

The Israeli army said that about 200 missiles deviated from their targets, killing four people inside Gaza, including a ten-year-old girl. The Islamic Jihad movement denied that the rockets it fired missed its targets or led to deaths in the Strip.

In the context of Egyptian efforts to mediate between the two sides, two Palestinian officials familiar with the course of the talks said that the two sides are discussing a draft proposed by Cairo.

Among the terms of the truce, the Islamic Jihad movement wants Israel to commit to stopping air strikes targeting the movement's leaders, but Israel refuses to do so. It seems that Israel hopes that the movement will stop the hostilities unilaterally if the air strikes succeed in reducing the number of its leadership and its stock of missiles.

The Israeli air strikes injured at least 110 people, destroyed a number of buildings and damaged more than 300 apartments in the Gaza Strip, whose population has been suffering from a worsening humanitarian crisis for decades.