Twelve people including nine civilians have been killed after Israeli air strikes hit the besieged Gaza Strip with Israel’s military saying it ‘targeted of members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement’.
The Ministry of Health has declared 12 people dead in the Gaza Strip, and at least 20 others were injured in the Israeli air attacks.
“From these 12, three of them are Islamic Jihad commanders while the nine others are civilians – mostly families of these commanders, and also civilians around the apartments that were targeted,” Al Jazeera reported.
More Read
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement announced that three of its leaders were killed in the air attacks. The deceased were identified as Jihad al-Ghannam, Khalil al-Bahtini, and Tariq Izz al-Deen.
The three were killed along with their wives and several children, the group said in a statement which did not give details on their wives or how many children were killed and their ages.
Witnesses said an explosion hit the top floor of an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern city of Rafah, the Reuters news agency reported.
The Israeli army said the air attacks, codenamed “Operation Shield and Arrow”, targeted three Palestinian Islamic Jihad members who it claimed were responsible for recent rockets fired towards Israel.
Last week, Israeli missiles pounded the densely-populated Gaza Strip following rockets fired towards Israeli territory in the aftermath of the death in an Israeli prison of well-known Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan.
