The Egyptian mediator said on Sunday that he had obtained Israel’s agreement to a truce with Islamic Jihad but said he was awaiting a response from the Palestinian armed group, on the third day of hostilities that have killed 31 Palestinians, including children and fighters in Loop.

The powerful Islamic Jihad, based in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, confirmed “ongoing negotiations at the highest level for a truce.” He did not indicate whether he accepted it or not, but warned that “the resistance will not stop if the aggressions and crimes of the occupation do not stop.”

On Sunday, for the first time since hostilities began on Friday, Islamic Jihad claimed to have fired rockets at Jerusalem. But like 97% of the 585 rockets fired from Gaza according to the Israeli army, they were intercepted by the Israeli anti-missile shield.

Israeli attacks have continued in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the city of Rafah, to the south of this territory under the control of the armed Islamist group Hamas and under an Israeli blockade for more than 15 years.

“The Israeli side has accepted the truce,” said a security official in Egypt, a longtime intermediary between Israel and the armed groups in Gaza.

The Israeli army said it launched a “preemptive strike” against Islamic Jihad on Friday, killing several of its fighters and “neutralizing” its top military leaders in Gaza, Tayssir Al-Jabari and Khaled Mansour.

His death was confirmed by the Islamic Jihad, considered “terrorist” by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

“Every Martyrs Day”

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 31 Palestinians, including six children, have been killed and 275 injured since Friday in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli authorities dispute this assessment, claiming that Palestinian children were killed in a failed Islamic Jihad rocket attack on Israel on Saturday.

In Israel, two people have been slightly injured by rocket fire since Friday, according to rescue teams.

On Sunday morning, sirens sounded in the Jerusalem area, warning of rocket fire, intercepted according to the Israeli army.

At the time of the shooting, hundreds of Israelis had begun to gather in East Jerusalem’s Old City for a Jewish holiday. Jewish nationalists flocked to the Esplanade of the Mosques, the third holiest site in Islam but also the holiest site in Judaism called the Temple Mount. East Jerusalem is occupied and annexed by Israel.

“The resistance” is “united in battle” against Israel, said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, which has so far not participated in the ongoing hostilities.

This confrontation is the worst since the one between Israel and armed organizations in Gaza in May 2021, in which 260 Palestinians were killed in 11 days, including combatants, and 14 killed in Israel, including a soldier, according to local authorities.

“Every day we wake up to martyrs, children and women,” Abu Mahmoud al-Madhoun, 56, said in Gaza on Sunday. “Every time an apartment or house is destroyed, people are killed, injured or displaced.”

“extraordinary result”

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the operation in Gaza would continue “as long as necessary”, calling the attack that killed Khaled Mansour on Saturday an “extraordinary result”.

The attack in Rafah killed eight people, according to the Gaza Interior Ministry. Residential buildings have been destroyed in Israeli raids, according to Hamas.

Before the launch of the Israeli operation, the army had arrested on August 1 a leader of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

The Israeli authorities justified their first attacks on Friday in Gaza by fear of retaliation from Gaza. Some 40 members of the group have been arrested in the past two days in the West Bank.

Mohammed Abou Salmiya, director of the Chifa hospital in Gaza, said the wounded were arriving “every minute” at the hospital and stressed “the urgency of opening the borders to bring medicine and fuel for electricity.”

Gaza’s only power plant was shut down on Saturday due to lack of fuel, four days after Israel closed the crossings with the enclave for security reasons.