Top militants among 12 killed as Israeli jets hit Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza Strip

Gaza City: Top three militants were among the 12 people killed in Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-controlled territory.

The Israeli military announced it had carried out strikes against Palestinian “Islamic Jihad targets” in the area, without giving further details.

The militant group confirmed three senior officials were killed, naming them in a statement as Jihad Ghannam, secretary of the Al-Quds Brigades military council, and Khalil al-Bahtini, also of the council and commander of the military wing in northern Gaza.

The third, Tareq Ezzedine, was described by Islamic Jihad as “one of the heads of military action” in the occupied West Bank who operated from Gaza.

The ministry said that women and children were among the dead, but did not give further details as to the identity of the victims.

According to Al Jazeera, an unconfirmed number of people were also injured in the Israeli air attacks.

Explosions targeting residential apartments were heard at about 2 am local time on Tuesday (23:00 GMT Monday) in different parts of Gaza, Al Jazeera reported, adding, It’s not very clear the names of the people who have been killed or the number of people who have been injured.

Witnesses said an explosion hit the top floor of an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern city of Rafah in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The air strikes, which began a little after 2 am (2300 GMT), were still going nearly two hours later, according to AFP, with a new explosion heard in the east.

The operation comes less than a week after Islamic Jihad announced a truce around Gaza – brokered with help from Egypt – following a fresh flare-up in violence on the heels of one of its members, who had been on hunger strike, dying in an Israeli prison.

Roles of militants

In separate statements detailing each of the Islamic Jihad figures killed, the Israeli army affirmed it would “continue to operate for the security of the civilians in the state of Israel”.

The military presented Ghannan as “one of the most senior members of the organisation” who “was entrusted with coordinating weapons and money transfers between the Hamas terrorist organisation” and his movement.

Bahtini was “responsible for the rocket fire toward Israel in the past month”, Israel said.

Ezzedine was recently “planning and direction (sic) multiple attacks against Israeli” civilians in the West Bank, where he was from and which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison by Israel for his involvement in suicide attacks in the 2000s, before being freed in a 2011 prisoner exchange and transferred to Gaza, according to the army.

Israel and Gaza militants have fought multiple wars since Hamas took control of the Palestinian enclave in 2007.

A three-day conflict last August in Gaza caused 49 Palestinian fatalities and none on the Israeli side.

Tuesday’s casualties bring to 120 the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far this year.

Nineteen Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP count based on official sources from the two sides.

With inputs from agencies

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,
India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.