The clear resurgence of violence since the beginning of the year of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not calming down. 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. They also injured 20, according to the Ministry of Health of this territory under the control of the Palestinian movement Hamas.
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 considers “terrorist”.
Islamic Jihad says it will ‘avenge’ its leaders
Islamic Jihad confirmed 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, member of the same council and commander of the Brigades for the north of the Gaza Strip, and Tareq Ezzedine, “one of the leaders of military action” of the movement in the occupied West Bank, which he coordinated from the Gaza Strip.
“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 rise [la] determination” of the movement. Israel “has disdained all the initiatives of the mediators, the resistance will avenge the leaders” killed in the night, adds the Islamic Jihad.
Strikes during a truce
The airstrikes, which began shortly after 2 a.m., come less than a week after an Egyptian-mediated truce was announced following a new escalation of violence between the Israeli army and Islamic Jihad following the death in an Israeli prison of a leader of this movement on hunger strike for nearly three months.
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”. She presents Jihad Ghannam as “one of the most important leaders” of 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 Khalil Al-Bahtini, the army writes that he was “responsible for firing rockets (from Gaza) into Israel” over the past thirty days. As for Tareq Ezzedine, she affirms 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. He was released following a prisoner exchange in 2011.