(CNN) – Palestinian militants fired rockets at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on Friday, sparking an escalation of violence in the region that has resulted in the deaths of at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza and one person in Israel.
Jerusalem has never been attacked by rockets in the current hostilities that began earlier this week.
Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades said in a statement shortly after the rocket fire: “The rocket launch towards Jerusalem is a message and everyone should understand its purpose.” Jerusalem is before our eyes and what is happening there is not separate from Gaza.”
The operation was dubbed “Revenge of the Free”.
Explosions were heard in Jerusalem amid ongoing cross-border fire that has caused heavy bloodshed in the region, particularly along the Strip.
Talks on a ceasefire between Israel and Islamic Jihad in Gaza are currently “on hold,” a diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations told CNN on Friday. The source asked not to be named as the talks were closed-door diplomatic talks.
An Israeli airstrike on Friday also killed two Palestinian men in Gaza – including an Islamic Jihad commander in chief – and wounded five others. That brings the number of Palestinian men, women and children killed in Gaza to at least 33 since Tuesday, when Israel’s “Shield and…” Operation Arrow began.
A CNN producer who arrived at the scene shortly after the airstrike saw several windows on the top floor of an apartment building shattered.
Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
A building in the central Israeli city of Rehovot, pictured on Friday, was badly damaged after rocket fire from Gaza on Thursday amid ongoing violence in the region.
Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Rockets fired from Gaza toward Israel on Friday as hopes of a ceasefire to end days of fighting in the region faded.
Israel Defense Forces said IDF fighter jets also attacked four Islamic Jihad military posts. IDF planes also hit a mortar launcher in the southern Gaza Strip.
Sirens sounded throughout the day on Friday in Israel warning of rocket fire in areas around Gaza.
A CNN team in Sderot, southern Israel, watched Israeli air defenses intercept about eight to ten rockets arriving from Gaza and had to briefly seek shelter from falling shrapnel.
The IDF on Tuesday began unleashing waves of airstrikes on alleged Islamic Jihad operatives and infrastructure along the strip. The IDF has attacked 254 targets in Gaza during the operation, which it calls “Shield and Arrow.”
Palestinian militant groups responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel.
One of the three Palestinian deaths reported on Friday was a Palestinian man who died of his injuries in Gaza after being injured in an airstrike in the city of Jabaliya on Thursday, according to his family, according to the local health ministry.
The hospital where he died named him Alian Abu Wadi, 38, and said he died after doctors tried to save him.
Two others were killed in an airstrike on Friday: one was not publicly named and the other is Islamic Jihad commander-in-chief Iyad Al-Abd Al-Hassan, known as Abu Anas — a member of the military council and in charge of the Al-Quds operations unit of the brigades, the militant group announced on Friday.
Israeli forces said he was the target of the attack.
Al-Hassan “was a key figure in the organization and was involved in all decisions regarding rocket launches and attacks on Israel,” the IDF said, adding that his predecessor was killed on Tuesday.
Referring to the total death toll in the hostilities, IDF chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the Israeli military believes that 16 Palestinians killed in the violence were “combatants” and 14 “bystanders.”
The IDF also said that four of those Palestinians were killed by Islamic Jihad missiles that missed and landed in Gaza, which the militants dismissed as a lie.
According to the IDF, about 973 rockets were fired into Israel in the past three days through 4 p.m. (9 a.m. ET) Friday. Of these, 761 made it to Israel and 212 did not reach the Gaza Strip or ended up in the Mediterranean.
Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepted 296 missiles, the IDF said. The system only activates when it projects a missile to hit a populated area in Israel.
Authorities in Gaza have also pointed to the extensive damage, aside from the dead and injured, caused by Israeli airstrikes and border closures inside the extremely isolated enclave.
At least nine houses and 28 units had been demolished and 532 other units had been damaged, 37 of which were uninhabitable, authorities said at a government briefing on Friday. In all, 90 families lost their homes, they added.
They warned that Gaza would be forced to shut down its power plant within 72 hours as they cannot import fuel, adding that one in three of the power plant’s turbines had already shut down.
In addition, all formal schooling in Gaza has been suspended.
Fishing was halted for four days, leaving 3,500 fishermen unemployed. More than 600 tons of agricultural products are stuck in Gaza and cannot be exported.
Bashar Taleb/AFP/Getty Images
People take cover behind a wall as an Israeli airstrike hit a building in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth, an isolated coastal enclave of almost 2 million people in an area of 140 square miles.
The Hamas-ruled area has been largely cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli land, air and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007. Egypt controls the Gaza Strip’s southern border crossing, Rafah.
Israel has severely restricted the movement of civilians and controls the entry of basic goods into the narrow coastal strip.