TEHRAN (FNA)- The death toll from Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip has increased to 32, including several children and women, Quds Network reported, citing the health ministry in the besieged enclave.
The latest bout of aattacks by the Israeli regime in the North and the South of the besieged Gaza Strip has claimed the lives of six Palestinian children, and the second senior commander of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement.
The Islamic Jihad on Sunday confirmed that Khaled Mansour, its commander in the South of the Gaza Strip, had been killed in an Israeli raid on Saturday, according to the Al-Jazeera.
Mansour is the second high-ranking member of Islamic Jihad to be killed since Israel carried out airstrikes on Gaza on Friday, when it assassinated Tayseer Al-Jabari, a senior commander of the Islamic Jihad movement in the North.
Moreover, several children have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli military aircraft bombed the besieged enclave for a second day.
At least four children were killed in a blast in a residential area near the Jabaliya refugee camp North of the Gaza Strip on Saturday bringing the tally of children killed since Friday to six. Among them are two brothers aged five and eleven in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Medical sources in Gaza identified the two brothers killed in the Israeli assault as Moamen Al-Nayrab and Ahmed Al-Nayrab, with the Palestinian Health Ministry saying the regime’s brutal raid had since Friday left at least 32 people dead and 215 wounded.
“I can’t even put to words what I have just witnessed, I’m still shaking,” Ahamd Arafah, an eyewitness, said as he recounted the horrific scenes in an interview with the Middle East Eye.
“We were watching the news like everyone, then we heard screaming and went outside. I saw frightening scenes. Blood-covered children, body parts all over the street, people running around confused. It was literally a massacre. There are no other words to describe it. I’m still in shock at what I saw. They were just children. What is their crime?” he added.
Tensions have soared across the coastal enclave and the occupied territories since Friday, when the Israeli regime carried out a massacre against the Gaza Strip, killing scores of people and hitting a series of what it claimed were military targets.
Israel stopped the planned transport of fuel into Gaza before it struck on Friday, crippling the territory’s lone power plant and reducing electricity to around eight hours per day and drawing warnings from health officials that hospitals would be severely impacted within days.
In response to the brutal Israeli airstrikes Palestinian resistance forces fired nearly 600 rockets at the occupied territories, setting off air raid sirens and sending settlers running to bomb shelters.
The Islamic Jihad called the retaliatory barrage only an “initial response” to the Israeli bloodbath, with the Palestinian resistance movement’s Secretary General Ziad Al-Nakhalah stressing the Israeli enemy must expect a “non-stop” confrontation in the wake of the aggression.
According to a report by Reuters, Egypt announced it was engaged in intensive talks to calm the situation.
Israel announced on Saturday it is preparing for its aerial operation in Gaza to last a week, saying there are currently no discussions on a ceasefire with Islamic Jihad.
The military “is preparing for the operation to last week” and is “not currently holding ceasefire negotiations”, it added.
Last May, Gaza’s resistance groups fired around 4,000 rockets during the 11-day Operation Sword of Al-Quds after the Israeli regime initiated the war, which marked the fourth wholesale military campaign by the occupying regime against the densely-populated Palestinian enclave.
The governor of Jerusalem has also said Sunday that 26 groups of Israeli settlers have stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound since the early morning.
This brings the number of Israeli settlers entering the compound on Sunday to 1,351, he added.