Israel bombs Gaza Strip, killing three Islamic Jihad leaders

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Israeli warplanes have bombed the Gaza Strip, killing three senior Islamic Jihad commanders, according to Palestinian officials. In total nine people were killed, the territory’s health ministry said.

The Israeli military said it targeted three Islamic Jihad leaders. Two Islamic Jihad sources confirmed the deaths, Reuters reported.

Witnesses said an explosion hit the top floor of an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern city of Rafah early on Tuesday morning. Airstrikes continued in the early hours targeting militant training sites, Associated Press reported.

Women and children were among the dead, the health ministry said.

The Israeli army identified the three Islamic Jihad leaders it targeted as Jihad Ghannam and Khalil Al-Bahtani in the Gaza Strip and Tareq Ezzdine in the West Bank.

In Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, an Agence France-Presse photographer saw the body of a man identified as Ghannam.

The airstrikes, which began a little after 2am local time, were still going nearly two hours later, according to AFP journalists, with a new explosion heard in the east.

There has been increasing violence in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has been conducting near-daily raids for several months to detain Palestinians suspected in planning or carrying out attacks on Israelis.

In anticipation of Palestinian rocket attacks in response to the airstrikes, the Israeli military issued instructions advising people in communities within 25 miles (40km) of Gaza to stay close to designated bomb shelters.

Last week Gaza militants fired several waves of rockets towards southern Israel, and the Israeli military responded with airstrikes, after the hunger strike death of a senior Islamic Jihad member in Israeli custody. The exchange of fire ended with a fragile ceasefire mediated by Egypt, the UN and Qatar.

The airstrikes are similar to ones in 2022 in which Israel bombed places housing commanders of Islamic Jihad, setting off a three-day blitz in which the Iranian-backed group lost its two top commanders and dozens of other members.

Israel says the raids in the West Bank are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see the attacks as further entrenchment of Israel’s 56-year, open-ended occupation.

With Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters