Ten-year-old Lin Belal Abd al-Salam Loh and 16-year-old Vizen Juda Aliyan were among the casualties.
By Pesach Benson, TPS
The Israeli military on Thursday accused Palestinian Islamic Jihad of killing four Gaza civilians in failed rocket launches.
The four were killed in separate incidents all on Wednesday as the terror group fired more than 500 rockets. Of those, the Israel Defense Forces reported that 108 of the launches failed.
In one of the cases, a rocket landed in Beit Hanoun, in the northwest area of Gaza, killing 16-year-old Rami Shadi Hamdan and 51-year-old Ahmed Muhammad al-Shabaki.
Other failed launches killed 10-year-old Lin Belal Abd al-Salam Loh and 16-year-old Vizen Juda Aliyan.
During a previous military operation against Islamic Jihad in August 2022, the terror group fired around 1,000 rockets, of which 120 misfired. Fourteen Palestinians were killed by misfired rockets, raising widespread anger in Gaza.
Maintaining weapons caches, tunnels, launchers, and command and control sites in civilian areas is a war crime. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas and Islamic Jihad of deliberately embedding themselves in close proximity to homes, schools, hospitals and mosques.
The Israeli air strikes on Islamic Jihad leaders come against the backdrop of a rocket barrage fired by the terror group following the death of Khader Adnan on May 2. The imprisoned Adnan, a senior Islamic Jihad figure, died after an 86-day hunger strike. The terror group had threatened throughout Adnan’s hunger strike that it would hold Israel responsible for its member’s death.
Israel responded with surprise air strikes killing three senior Islamic Jihad commanders on May 9. The commander of the terror group’s rocket squads, Ali Ghali, was killed in an air strike on Thursday morning.