“The Al-Quds Brigades mourn the leader Khaled Mansour, member of the Security Council and commander of the southern region, who was martyred as a result of an Israeli airstrike yesterday,” the group writes in a statement according to the news agency Reuters.
The Al-Quds Brigades are the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.
The commander of the northern part of the Gaza Strip, Taysir Jabari, was killed in another air raid on Friday afternoon.
The worst outbreak of violence in more than a year
Palestinian authorities say 24 people have been killed and more than 200 injured since the attacks began on Friday. The violence is the bloodiest since the 11-day war in the Gaza Strip in May 2021.
Israel states that the attacks aim to eliminate a concrete and imminent threat from Islamic Jihad against Israelis in the area closest to the Gaza Strip. The Israeli authorities have also arrested a number of suspected members of the group in the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad has responded by firing hundreds of rockets at Israel, though without causing any major damage. The movement is labeled a terrorist by the EU and the US, as is the larger Hamas movement.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has so far stayed out of the latest conflict.