Thirteen Palestinians, including three leaders of Islamic Jihad and four children, were killed Tuesday before dawn in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, according to local authorities.
These raids, less than a week after the announcement of a truce between Israel and Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza, raise fears of a new spiral of violence. The Israeli army has called on Israelis living within a radius of 40 km around this territory to stay close to a shelter, in case of Palestinian rocket fire.
According to the army, the strikes mobilized 40 aircraft and targeted three commanders of the Al-Quds brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, in Gaza itself and in Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
“We have achieved the goals we wanted to achieve,” military spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters.
The Islamic Jihad, a movement described as “terrorist” by Israel, the European Union and the United States, confirmed in a press release the death of three leaders.
He identified them as Jihad Ghannam, the head of the Al-Quds brigades for the Gaza Strip, Khalil Al-Bahtini, a member of the same council and commander of the brigades for the north of the territory, and Tareq Ezzedine, “a leader of the military action” of the movement in the occupied West Bank, which he coordinated from Gaza.
Its strikes left 13 dead, including four children and around 20 wounded, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Among those killed are a Russian citizen, a doctor, his wife and one of their children, according to a message posted on Facebook by the Russian Representation in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
The funeral gathered thousands of people in Gaza, AFP journalists found.
“Unacceptable”
In a statement, the UN envoy for the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, deemed the death of civilians “unacceptable”.
Expressing “its deep concern”, France recalled “the obligations to protect civilians and respect international humanitarian law incumbent on Israel”, which has imposed a blockade on Gaza since the takeover of the Islamist Hamas in 2007.
On Tuesday morning, an AFP reporter saw the top of a destroyed apartment building and the body of a boy in the morgue of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Avichai Kaplan, of the Israeli army’s legal department, said the army was “taking all possible precautions to minimize harm to civilians”.
Speaking to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, he said the operation followed “months of attacks on Israeli civilians”.
“The blood of the martyrs only strengthens our determination to continue on their path,” Abu Hamza, spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigades, said in a video.
Daoud Chehab, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza, assured that “all Israeli towns and settlements” would be “under fire”.
The strikes come less than a week after an escalation of violence in less than 48 hours between the Israeli army and Islamic Jihad, following the death in an Israeli prison of an official of the organization on hunger strike.
A truce had been announced, resulting in particular from Egyptian mediation. Israel had not commented.
After these new raids, Egyptian diplomacy denounced “aggression” which “could make the situation uncontrollable in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. The Arab League condemned them “in the strongest terms”.
“Targeted Elimination”
“It was about time,” wrote Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who last week criticized the Israeli military response, deeming it too weak.
After boycotting the Council of Ministers and sessions in Parliament in recent days, he said he would participate again.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 121 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.