(Gaza) Twelve people, including three leaders of Islamic Jihad, but also children, according to local authorities, were killed Tuesday before dawn in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
The raids, less than a week after the announcement of a truce between Israel and Islamic Jihad fighters in the Gaza Strip, have raised fears of a new spiral of violence, and the Israeli army has called on Israeli civilians living in a radius of 40 km around this territory to remain close to a shelter, in the event of Palestinian rocket fire.
The army announced that its strikes targeted in particular three commanders of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, a movement that Israel describes as “terrorist”.
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Islamic Jihad confirmed in a statement the deaths of three Al-Quds Brigades officials, whom it identified as Jihad Ghannam, secretary of the Al-Quds Brigades Military Council, Khalil Al-Bahtini, a member of the same council and commander of the Brigades for the North of the Gaza Strip, and Tareq Ezzedine, “one of the heads of military action” of the movement in the occupied West Bank, which he coordinated from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli air strikes on Gaza left 12 dead, including “children”, and 20 injured, according to the Ministry of Health of this territory under the control of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
“We mourn the leaders and their wives and a number of their sons who were killed in a cowardly Zionist crime,” Islamic Jihad wrote in its statement, saying “the blood of the martyrs will increase (the) resolve” of the movement.
Calls for revenge
Israel “has disdained all the initiatives of the mediators, the resistance will avenge the leaders” killed in the night, adds Islamic Jihad.
“Occupation forces bear responsibility for the consequences of this escalation,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told AFP.
“The enemy will pay the price for his crime,” said another statement on behalf of the (in exile) Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and that “the assassination of leaders (of Palestinian groups) will not bring security to the occupier, but will rather strengthen the resistance”.
An AFP photographer saw Ghannam’s body at a Palestinian hospital morgue in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. In Gaza itself, an AFP journalist saw the top of a building on fire after these night strikes and ambulances evacuating victims.
The airstrikes began shortly after 2 a.m. (7 p.m. Eastern Time) and continued for nearly two hours, according to AFP reporters in Gaza.
They come less than a week after the announcement of a truce obtained following Egyptian mediation at the end of a new escalation of violence of less than 48 hours between the Israeli army and the Islamic Jihad following the death in an Israeli prison of a leader of this movement on hunger strike for nearly three months.
A Palestinian was then killed by an Israeli strike and people were injured by shrapnel from Palestinian rockets in the Israeli town of Sderot.
In separate statements issued for each of the Islamic Jihad officials targeted overnight, the Israeli military said it “will continue to act for the safety of civilians in Israel”.
“Arms Transfers”
The army presents Ghannam as “one of the most important leaders” of the Islamic Jihad, saying that he was in charge “of coordinating the transfer of arms and money between the terrorist organization of Hamas” and his own movement.
About Al-Bahtini, the army writes that he was “responsible for firing rockets (from Gaza) into Israel” over the past 30 days.
As for Ezzedine, she claims that “he had recently planned (and directed) multiple attacks against Israeli civilians” in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and that he had been sentenced to 25 years in prison in Israel. for his “involvement” in suicide attacks, particularly in the 2000s.
Originally from Jenin, in the northern West Bank, Ezzedine was released following a prisoner exchange in 2011 and deported to the Gaza Strip, territory under Hamas control since 2007.
The army also claims to have targeted “ten” arms manufacturing centers (including rockets) or Islamic Jihad military infrastructure in the Gaza Strip overnight.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 120 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources .
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.