Despite ceasefire talks, terrorists expanded range of rockets

As Egypt pushed ceasefire deal, Islamic Jihad fires on Tel Aviv suburbs.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Although Israel had reportedly agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that would see Operation Breaking Dawn come to an end at 8 p.m. on Sunday, the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group expanded the range of its rocketfire, targeting cities in central Israel.

While the fate of the ceasefire proposal remained unclear, PIJ continued firing missiles and rockets towards Israel throughout Sunday afternoon.

Sirens wailed in Rishon LeTzion, a central Israel city located just south of Tel Aviv.

The southern city of Beersheba also came under assault from the Strip on Sunday afternoon, marking the first time it was targeted in this round of fighting. Also on Sunday, rocket sirens sounded in the outskirts of Jerusalem for the first time.

Social media footage showed fallen rockets in the central Israel town of Gan Yavneh.

Some 100 buildings and homes in Israel are believed to have been damaged since the beginning of the fighting last Friday.

Israel’s Gaza-adjacent southern municipalities have been bombarded with hundreds of rockets since the beginning of the clash on Friday. Several communities in the Eshkol Regional Council reported power outages on Sunday afternoon, following a particularly intense salvo of projectiles.

Rockets that struck open areas in southern Israel sparked several fires, with firefighting teams attempting to put out the blazes.

In a statement, Religious Zionism chair MK Betzalel Smotrich encouraged the Israeli government to continue striking Gaza and to “crush the enemy.”

“I call on the political echelon not to stop and not to slow down – the time has come to reverse the equation,” Smotrich said.

“Give the order and grind the terrorist organizations to the ground,” he added.

Bezalel SmotrichCeasefireGaza rocketsIslamic JihadOperation Breaking DawnPalestinian Islamic Jihad