Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad announced a truce around Gaza yesterday, after militants traded fire with Israel following the death in Israeli custody of a hunger striker from its ranks.
Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the UN intervened to broker a return to calm from 4am, sources in Islamic Jihad and fellow militant group Hamas told reporters.
Israel did not immediately confirm the agreement.
Photo: AFP
The Israeli army said the last warning sirens sounded near the Gaza border at about 5:30am.
Witnesses in the blockaded Palestinian territory told reporters that several rockets were fired at Israel at about that time.
“One round of confrontation has ended, but the march of resistance continues and will not stop,” Islamic Jihad spokesman Tariq Salmi said in a statement.
“Our brave fighters have proven their loyalty and commitment to defending their people,” he added.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh demanded that Israel return the hunger striker’s body to his family.
“We stress — and as we have informed all the mediators who intervened — the necessity of handing over the body of the martyr Khader Adnan to his patient family,” Haniyeh said in a statement.
Adnan, 45, from Jenin in the occupied West Bank, died early on Tuesday after an 87-day hunger strike following his arrest by Israel over ties to Islamic Jihad.
A string of high-profile hunger strikes during at least 13 stints in Israeli custody had turned Adnan into a national hero, and revitalized hunger striking as a form of protest among Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli jails.
From Tuesday morning, about 100 rockets were fired by militant groups from Gaza toward Israel, Islamic Jihad said.
In response, the Israeli army said it carried out a number of airstrikes on Gaza early yesterday, targeting “weapons manufacturing sites, outposts, military complexes and an underground terror tunnel” belonging to Hamas.
“It [Hamas] will face the consequences,” the army added.
Israel generally holds Hamas responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza, regardless of which militant group launched it. The Islamist group has controlled the territory since ousting loyalists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
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