A senior commander of a Palestinian armed group and several children have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli jets bombed the besieged enclave for a second day.
In a statement on Sunday, Islamic Jihad confirmed that Khaled Mansour, its commander in the south of the Gaza Strip, had been killed in an Israeli raid on Saturday.
Mansour is the second high-ranking member of Islamic Jihad to be killed since Israel began attacking Gaza on Friday, when it assassinated the group\u2019s commander in the north, Taysir al-Jabari.
Israel has warned that its campaign against Islamic Jihad could last a week, and its attacks on Gaza have destroyed apartment buildings and struck refugee camps.
At least four children were killed in a blast close to the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday, according to Hamas, the group that governs the Gaza Strip. It blamed Israel for the deaths, but the military denied any responsibility, saying the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera could not verify the claims immediately.
The latest deaths bring the tally of children killed since Friday to six, and the total death toll among Palestinians to 24. At least 204 others have also been wounded, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Palestinian fighters have responded to the bombings by launching more than 400 rockets at Israel. Most of the rockets were intercepted, and there have been no reports of serious casualties, according to the Israeli ambulance service.
The violence has raised fears of another war on Gaza by Israel, just 15 months after a monthlong conflict that killed more than 260 people.
\u201cThe last war caused widespread devastation here in the Gaza Strip. A year later, there has been almost no reconstruction,\u201d Al Jazeera\u2019s Youmna ElSayed said, reporting from Gaza City. \u201cThis isolated coastal territory is impoverished, its people are barely recovering. And many fear another round of escalation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Intensive mediation\u2019 A senior commander of a Palestinian armed group and several children have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli jets bombed the besieged enclave for a second day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>About 2.3 million Palestinians are packed into the narrow coastal Gaza Strip, with Israel and Egypt tightly restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the enclave and imposing a naval blockade, citing security concerns.
Israel stopped the planned transport of fuel into Gaza shortly before it launched its attacks on Friday, crippling the territory\u2019s lone power plant and reducing electricity to about four hours per day and drawing warnings from health officials that hospitals would be severely affected within days.
\u201c[The Israelis] are attacking civilians, they are attacking premises, residential areas. Nobody knows what will happen in the coming hours,\u201d said Dr Medhat Abbas, director at the Gaza health ministry.
\u201cThis is an appeal to extend a helping hand to the ministry of health in Gaza Strip right now. There\u2019s a shortage of electricity. It\u2019s been declared now that it will only be four hours a day. This means we will rely in the hospitals on generators. Generators consume half a million litres every month. We do not have this fuel right now.\u201d
Egypt\u2019s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said Cairo is talking \u201caround the clock\u201d with both sides to ease the violence.
An Egyptian intelligence delegation headed by Major General Ahmed Abdelkhaliq arrived in Israel on Saturday and would be travelling to Gaza for mediation talks, two Egyptian security sources told the Reuters news agency. They were hoping to secure a day\u2019s ceasefire in order to carry out the talks, the sources added.
\u201cIntensive efforts have been made this evening and the movement listened to the mediators, but these efforts haven\u2019t reached an agreement yet,\u201d an Islamic Jihad official told Reuters late on Saturday.
The latest round of tensions began earlier this week after Israeli forces arrested Bassam al-Saadi, an Islamic Jihad commander in the occupied West Bank. Al-Saadi was arrested during an Israeli raid in the city of Jenin, during which a teenager was killed. Israeli forces then sealed roads around the Gaza Strip and on Friday bombed an apartment building in the centre of Gaza City, killing al-Jabari, Islamic Jihad\u2019s northern commander, and at least nine others, including a five-year-old girl and a 23-year-old woman.
The Israeli military also said it had arrested 19 more members of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank on Saturday.
Islamic Jihad is aligned with the governing Hamas, but often acts independently.
A further escalation of the violence could depend on whether Hamas would opt to join the fighting alongside Islamic Jihad.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum has said \u201cthe Israeli enemy, which started the escalation against Gaza and committed a new crime, must pay the price and bear full responsibility for it\u201d.
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority has also condemned the Israeli attacks.
The violence poses an early test for Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who assumed the role of caretaker leader ahead of elections in November, when he hopes to keep the top job.
Lapid, a centrist former TV host and author, has experience in diplomacy having served as foreign minister in the outgoing government, but has thin security credentials. A conflict with Gaza could burnish his standing and give him a boost as he faces off against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a security hawk who led the country during three of its four wars with Hamas.
The United States said on Saturday that it fully supported Israel\u2019s right to defend itself and urged all sides to avoid further escalation, while Iran, which backs Islamic Jihad, said Israel will \u201cpay a heavy price\u201d for the latest attacks.
United Nations and European Union Middle East envoys have also expressed concern about the violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"