Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Saturday that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has 6,000 rockets in its arsenal, and that Hamas has four times that number.
Hanegbi added that Israel was focused more on shooting gunmen in Gaza at the moment than on reaching a cease-fire that would end the latest round of cross-border fighting that began on Tuesday.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza into Israel, after Israeli planes bombed Islamic Jihad targets in the Strip last night as the violence spilled over into the West Bank, on the fifth day of fighting.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid on the outskirts of the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, where clashes broke out.
For his part, a spokesman for the Israeli army said that gunmen exchanged fire with the Israeli forces.
Earlier, the Israeli army said it had bombed Islamic Jihad’s command centers and rocket launchers in its pre-dawn operations.
Black and white aerial footage released by the army showed explosions and clouds of smoke rising from bombed sites.
A few hours later, gunmen from Gaza fired rockets, which led to sirens sounding and Israelis in the border areas scrambling for bomb shelters. No injuries were reported.
Egypt is trying to mediate a truce in the confrontation, which has so far killed at least 33 Palestinians and one Israeli.
More than 140 Palestinians and at least 19 Israelis and foreigners have been killed since January.
Since Tuesday, Israeli forces have killed six senior Islamic Jihad leaders when it launched a campaign against the movement, saying it was planning attacks.
Islamic Jihad, the largest armed movement in Gaza after Hamas, which rules the Strip, fired nearly a thousand rockets, some of which reached deep into Israel, and a woman was killed Thursday when a rocket hit an apartment in a suburb of Tel Aviv.
At least four women and six children were killed in the Gaza Strip, and Israel says four Palestinians were killed by rockets from Gaza that strayed from their targets, which Islamic Jihad denied.
