Nine people were killed Tuesday before dawn in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health of this territory under the control of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
Among the dead are women and children, said the ministry without further details on the identity of the dead. In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, an AFP photographer saw the body of a man identified as Jihad Ghannam, an official in the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli army announced for its part that it had carried out strikes on “Islamic Jihad targets” in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, an AFP journalist saw the top of a building on fire after these night strikes and ambulances evacuating victims.
The airstrikes, which began shortly after 2 a.m. (2300 GMT) were still underway around 3:50 a.m. (0050 GMT), according to AFP journalists in Gaza, where a new explosion has just been heard east of town.
They come less than a week after the announcement of a truce obtained following Egyptian mediation after a new escalation of violence between the Israeli army and Islamic Jihad following the death in an Israeli prison. of a leader of this Islamist movement on hunger strike for three months.
The Israeli army announced in press releases that it had “targeted” three leaders of Islamic Jihad, a movement described as “terrorist” by Israel: two in the Gaza Strip, Jihad Ghannam, and Khalil Al-Bahtani, and another in the West Bank , Tareq Ezzdine.
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