GAZA CITY: Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed three Islamic Jihad militant group leaders and 10 others, including several children, on Tuesday, officials in Gaza said.
Islamic Jihad vowed to "avenge" the deaths in the pre-dawn raid involving some 40 Israeli aircraft, which hit targets in the crowded coastal territory for nearly two hours from just after 2:00 am on Monday.
The health ministry said four children were among those killed and 20 people were wounded, some of them in serious or critical condition, in the attacks which left buildings ablaze and reduced others to rubble.
The Israeli army said that in its Gaza strikes it had targeted three leaders of Islamic Jihad, which it considers a terrorist group, as well as its "weapon manufacturing sites".
Asked about child casualties, army spokesman Richard Hecht said: "If there were some tragic deaths, we'll look into it."
Islamic Jihad confirmed three of its senior members were killed in Gaza.
It named them as Jihad Ghannam, secretary of the Al Quds Brigades military council, Khalil al Bahtini, commander of the military wing in northern Gaza, and Tareq Ezzedine, a military leader in the West Bank who operated from Gaza.
Mourners carried the bodies of those killed through the streets as funeral processions got underway.
Moscow's diplomatic mission to the Palestinians said one of the dead was a Russian citizen and doctor, who was killed alongside his wife and one of his children.
Islamic Jihad vowed to retaliate, with spokesman Daoud Shehab warning that "the resistance considers that all cities and settlements in the Israeli depths will be under its fire".
Israel last week traded air strikes on Gaza for rocket fire from the enclave, an exchange sparked by the death in Israeli custody of a Palestinian hunger striker with ties to Islamic Jihad, which ended with an Egypt-brokered truce.
Islamic Jihad charged on Tuesday that Israel had "scorned all the initiatives of mediators" and vowed it would "avenge the leaders" killed in the latest air strikes.
The Israeli military described Ghannan as "one of the most senior members" of Islamic Jihad who had coordinated weapons and money transfers with Hamas.
Bahtini was "responsible for the rocket fire towards Israel in the past month", Israel said.
And Ezzedine, who was released from Israeli detention in a 2011 prisoner exchange, had been planning "multiple attacks against Israeli" civilians in the West Bank, it charged.
An Islamic Jihad source said that Ezzedine was part of a delegation from the group that had been due to travel to Cairo for a meeting on Thursday, which has now been cancelled. — AFP
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