Israel kills another PIJ leader in Gaza, death toll rises to 26
Israel killed another senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commander as it continued its air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Thursday, amid an escalation with the enclave's militias that has left 26 Gazans dead since Tuesday.
"Israeli forces targeted the deputy commander of the PIJ terrorist organisation's rocket force in the Gaza Strip," Ahmad Abu Daqqa, who "played a major role in launching rockets into Israel", the Israeli army said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry in Gaza confirmed that one Palestinian was killed and four wounded in a strike by Israeli fighter jets on a house in the southern Gaza Strip town of Abbasan, raising the death toll to 26, 15 of them civilians, and the number of wounded to 80.
The armed wing of the PIJ, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU, recognised Abu Daqqa as a senior member and claimed he was killed when Israeli forces attacked his family home in Abbasan.
Abu Daqqa has planned and executed rocket attacks into Israel in previous escalations, and in recent days was responsible for the routine management of his militia and was involved in the barrage of gunfire that targeted the Israeli town of Sderot, adjacent to the Strip, the Israeli military said.
Abu Daqqa was the deputy of Ali Ghali, the commander of the PIJ rocket force, who was killed in another Israeli "targeted killing" in an air strike on his home in Khan Younis, south of the Strip, where two of his family members were also killed.
While the Israeli army has focused its attacks on PIJ targets, a spokesman for the Islamist Hamas movement - which rules Gaza and has a much larger arsenal - said the group is involved in the armed response.
Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations continue to try to broker a ceasefire in the escalation that began on Tuesday, but the prospect of a short-term truce between Israel and Gaza's armed militias is increasingly evaporating amid messages of inflammatory rhetoric from both sides and as the exchange of fire continues unabated.
The Israeli army said that since it began bombing in the early hours of Tuesday morning, its aircraft have successfully hit 166 PIJ targets, including members' homes and military installations such as rocket launchers and weapons factories and warehouses.
For their part, Gaza's armed militias have fired some 550 projectiles - mostly rockets but also mortars - since yesterday, of which 175 were intercepted by Israeli anti-missile systems without causing casualties or injuries.