(CNN) – A rocket fired from Gaza struck an apartment building in Israel on Thursday, causing the first Israeli death in days of violence between the two sides that had already claimed at least 28 Palestinian lives.
The rocket hit a four-storey apartment building in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, injuring five people, according to the Magen David Adom (MDA) medical service.
“MDA paramedics have pronounced one victim dead with severe shrapnel wounds and have evacuated five victims, including a 74-year-old man and a 50-year-old man, two women in their 70s in moderate condition and one in mild condition. Two other victims were evacuated with symptoms of stress,” MDA said in a statement.
“When we arrived on site we saw massive destruction, we immediately went inside to search the apartments. In a third floor apartment we found an unconscious male victim with a severe multi-trauma injury and could only pronounce him dead,” said Magen David Adom (MDA) EMTs Yedidya Hakmon and Tomer Pashko.
An 82-year-old woman was injured after a rocket fired from Gaza hit the courtyard of her home in the Negev region of Israel on Thursday, a later statement said.
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as of 2:30 p.m. local time (7:30 a.m. ET), at least 547 rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel as Palestinian militants retaliated against the Israeli military’s ongoing heavy airstrikes. The IDF has been targeting Islamic Jihad operatives and infrastructure along the strip since Tuesday.
Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images
The Israeli military fired a missile from its Iron Dome defense system into Gaza on May 10, 2023 as violence in the region escalated.
Four leaders of the Palestinian militant organization have died in the bombings so far. Al-Quds Forces commander Ali Hassan Ghali, who led the Al-Quds Forces missile unit, was killed in Thursday morning’s attacks, the militant group said in a statement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted earlier Thursday that they had “targeted Ali Ghali, the commander of Islamic Jihad’s rocket launchers,” along with allegedly two other Islamic Jihad operatives in Gaza.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, of the 28 Palestinians killed since Tuesday, 15 died on Tuesday, seven on Wednesday and six on Thursday.
Another 86 people have been injured since airstrikes began on Gaza at dawn on Tuesday, the ministry added.
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Palestinians inspect the rubble of a building after an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Meanwhile, talks on a ceasefire between Israel and Islamic Jihad have stalled, a diplomatic source familiar with the talks told CNN on Thursday. Due to the sensitivity of the diplomatic talks, the source asked not to be named.
Ghali is one of the founders of the militant group’s missile unit and has more than 20 years of missile experience, the Islamist group said on Thursday.
They said Ali Hassan Ghali was commanding the militant organization’s Al-Quds Brigades unit when he was killed.
He was born in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip in 1975 and joined Islamic Jihad in the early 1990s, sources said.
Ghali oversaw the training of militants in rocket launching and made rocket launchers himself, Islamic Jihad said.
He became unit chief and a member of the Al-Quds Forces military council in 2019 when his predecessor, Khaled Mansour, was killed.
Ghali survived several previous assassination attempts, Islamic Jihad said.
His brother Mahmoud Ghali and nephew Mohammad Mansour were killed with him at his sister’s home, the group said.
Tensions between Israeli and Palestinian forces have skyrocketed over the past week after a prominent Palestinian prisoner died in an Israeli prison while on hunger strike.
In response to the death of Khader Adnan, a former spokesman for the militant group that has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israeli detention policies, Islamic Jihad fired more than 100 rockets into Israel last Tuesday.
Since then, Israel has been attacking Islamic Jihad targets and using unmanned drones for surveillance while monitoring militant missile preparations for launch, IDF chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday.
Palestinian militant groups have also claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel as a result.
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A civil defense worker walks past the building of an Islamic Jihad military leader that was destroyed by Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis on Thursday.
The Israeli military exchanged heated arguments with Islamic Jihad over the Palestinian civilians killed in the attacks, while humanitarian organizations have sounded the alarm over the high civilian death toll in Gaza.
Israel said Thursday that four of the Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza, including children, were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets that missed and struck in the Gaza Strip – a claim that Islamic Jihad dismissed as a “lie”.
IDF chief spokesman Hagari said the four were killed “as a result of failed rocket launches by the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad.”
About a quarter of all rockets fired since Wednesday have landed in the Gaza Strip, the IDF said.
Another IDF spokesman, Maj. Nir Dinar, told CNN the military was “100% certain” that the four deaths were caused by Islamic Jihad rocket fire.
Islamic Jihad has denied allegations that it was responsible for any Palestinian deaths.
“That’s a lie,” the militant group told CNN on Thursday. “We didn’t make any mistakes on our part. All Palestinian victims were killed as a result of the Israeli army’s aggression. Israel is making these allegations to cover up its crimes.”
On Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all parties to exercise “maximum restraint” in the face of the serious bloodshed in Gaza.
“The Secretary-General condemns the loss of civilian life, including the deaths of children and women, which he considers unacceptable and which must be stopped immediately,” said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the Secretary-General, in a statement.
“Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the proportionate use of force and taking every possible precaution to protect civilians and civilian objects when conducting military operations. ”
The statement went on to say that the Secretary-General also condemned the “indiscriminate launching” of rockets from Gaza into Israel, adding that this “violates international humanitarian law and endangers both Palestinian and Israeli civilians.”
Meanwhile, Egyptian and Qatari officials said they would hold separate talks to reach a ceasefire in Gaza – but to no avail.