Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 13, including three Islamic Jihad leaders

Thirteen people, including three leaders of the Islamist movement Islamic Jihad, were killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, May 9 before dawn. The Israeli army announced for its part that it had carried out targeted operations against three commanders of the Al-Quds brigades, the armed wing of this Palestinian Islamist movement that Israel and several countries consider “terrorist”. Islamic Jihad confirmed the deaths of three officials.

Among the victims of the strikes are also four children, according to the report of the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The bombings also injured around twenty people. “We mourn the leaders and their wives and a number of their sons who were killed in a cowardly Zionist crime”reacted the Islamic Jihad, saying that “the blood of the martyrs will increase (the) determination” movement.

These airstrikes, which mobilized 40 aircraft, occur less than a week after the announcement of a truce between the Israeli army and the Islamist organization, obtained thanks to Egyptian mediation. A new escalation of violence ignited the region at the end of April, after the death of an Islamic Jihad official imprisoned in Israel, who had been on a hunger strike for more than three months. Since the start of 2023, at least 120 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed in conflict-related violence, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.