Israel hits Gaza as conflict flares after West Bank clashes

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza claimed responsibility on Friday for rockets fired on Israel overnight amid international efforts to defuse tensions following one of the deadliest raids in the occupied West Bank in years.

Israeli jets struck Gaza on Friday in retaliation for the rockets, which had set off alarms in Israeli communities near the border with the blockaded southern coastal strip that is controlled by Islamist movement Hamas.

There were no reports of casualties on either side and there was no immediate sign of escalation into a more serious conflict of the kind seen repeatedly over recent years with Palestinian groups firing hundreds of rockets and Israel pounding Gaza.

The overnight exchange followed an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the West Bank on Thursday that killed at least nine Palestinians, bringing the Palestinian death toll so far in 2023 to at least 30.

The deaths, which included militant gunmen as well as at least two civilians, left the highest single-day death toll in the West Bank in years, with another man killed in a separate incident in al-Ramm outside Jerusalem.

The raid, the latest in a near-daily series of clashes in

the West Bank over the past year, came days before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to visit Israel and the West Bank. Washington called for calm from both sides.

In Gaza, thousands of Islamic Jihad supporters rallied following Friday prayers, calling for the fight against Israel to be stepped up in the wake of the Jenin raid.

“We didn’t sleep the whole night, bombing and missiles,” said 50 year-old Abdallah Al-Husary. “There is worry and there is fear, any minute a war can happen. With any clash in the West Bank, there can be war along the borders in Gaza.”

In the Jabalya refugee camp, one of the movement’s leaders, Khaled Al-Batsh claimed responsibility for the rocket strikes and said Israel could not isolate Gaza from the West Bank.

“The Jerusalem Brigades’s rocket unit responded,” he said.

Islamic Jihad, an Iranianbacked movement dedicated to overthrowing Israel, is active in both flashpoint West Bank centres like Nablus and Jenin as well Gaza, where it exists alongside the larger and more powerful Hamas group.

In August, Israeli jets bombed targets in Gaza associated with the group during a weekend confrontation that saw hundreds of Islamic Jihad rockets launched against Israel, most of which were intercepted by air defence systems.