Israel attacked the besieged Gaza Strip with warplanes Friday, killing at least  30 Palestinians, a third of them civilians and two of them senior Islamic Jihad commanders.

Taysir al-Jabari, a commander of the al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Jihad, died in an air raid on an apartment in the Palestine Tower in the centre of Gaza City, the group said.

Reuters reported: Overnight, Khaled Mansour, a senior commander of the militant Islamic Jihad group, was killed in southern Gaza along with two associates and five other civilians, according to the group. Islamic Jihad said it would “not let their blood dry before they bombard the settlements of the enemy”.

According to Reuters, Palestinian rockets reached west of Jerusalem on the third day of fighting.

Aljazeera/Reuters.