"Citizens of Israel, we are still in the midst of the campaign. At this very moment, our forces are fiercely attacking the Gaza Strip and exacting a heavy price from the terrorist organizations," he said in a televised national emergency address.
Netanyahu added that the intelligence services' operations and the development of new technological capabilities is "creating a new equation" for Israel.
"We say to the terrorists and whoever dispatches terrorists: We see you everywhere. You cannot hide. We will choose the time and place to attack you. We will choose, not you," he said.
"We have inflicted upon Islamic Jihad in Gaza the hardest blow in its history. Within mere seconds, at night, at 3 separate locations, we simultaneously eliminated the terrorist organization's leaders."
On Tuesday night, Israel launched a military operation against militants of the Islamic Jihad Movement and its military infrastructure, including rocket launchers and mortars. As a result of the airstrikes on Tuesday, 15 people, including four women and six children, were killed. The victims included a Russian citizen. Today, four more Palestinians were killed in another series of airstrikes.
In response to the shelling of the Gaza Strip, Islamic Jihad militants fired dozens of rockets at Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and its suburbs.
In light of the latest spate in tensions between the two parties, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres blasted the reported deaths of civilians as "unacceptable" and called for both Palestinian and Israeli officials to "immediately" stop hostilities.
Remarks issued by Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq commented:
"Israel must abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the proportional use of force and taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of military operations."
The Israeli state has been launching repeat strikes across the Gaza Strip as a means to bombard what it refers to as Jihadi operatives and infrastructure. The IDF has since detailed that the Wednesday strikes caused the death of a fourth senior Palestinian commander who had been located in Khan Younis.
The rocket launches by Israel have been likened to the May 2021 exchanges that came in response to mass evictions of Palestinians families after the move had been approved by Israeli courts.