Sirens sounded in southern Israel on Thursday night, hours after the army announced that it had killed the commander and deputy of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s rocket force in Gaza.
The alerts were heard throughout the south and center of the country, as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant instructed the defense establishment to get ready for increased attacks by terrorists in the Strip.
An Israeli man was killed when a rocket fired from Gaza struck a four-story building in Rehovot, 12 miles south of Tel Aviv. The unidentified man’s body was reportedly found under the rubble.
It was the first Israeli fatality since the start of “Operation Shield and Arrow” against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
The Israel Air Force on Thursday afternoon killed a fifth PIJ terrorist leader in the latest hostilities, the IDF said in a statement.
Ahmed Abu-Deka, a senior member of the Islamic Jihad rocket launching force, was targeted.
The intensified rocket fire on Thursday came amid reports that Egypt is trying to broker a ceasefire. Israel was also in contact with other Arab countries on an agreement to end the fighting.
Jerusalem denied Arab media reports suggesting it had agreed to halt targeted killings of PIJ terrorists and hand over the body of PIJ member Khader Adnan, who died in prison last week after an 87-day hunger strike.
As of 2:30 p.m., the Israel Defense Forces reported that Gaza terrorists had fired 547 rockets and mortars at Israel since “Operation Shield and Arrow” began on Tuesday morning with the targeted assassinations of three PIJ terrorist leaders.
Out of these 547 launches, 394 projectiles crossed into Israeli territory and 124 fell short in Gaza. Four Palestinian civilians, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed by the failed rocket launches, according to the IDF.
Israeli aerial defenses intercepted 175 rockets on their way to populated areas.
The IDF said it targeted 166 terrorist sites in the Gaza Strip since the start of the military operation.
Some 330,000 Israeli children have had their schools shuttered for three days.
The commander of PIJ’s rocket force, Ali Hassan Muhammad Ghali, and two other PIJ operatives were killed Thursday in an early morning air strike on a building in the Sheikh Hamad neighborhood of Khan Younis.
“Ghali was a central figure in Islamic Jihad, as well as responsible for the recent rocket barrages launched against Israel,” the IDF tweeted.
PIJ vowed to avenge Ghali’s death, publishing a threatening video on Thursday of terrorists preparing for rocket attacks with the message “They will be drowned.”
