Nine people were killed on Tuesday, May 9 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, says the ministry without further details on the identity of the dead. In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, an Agence France-Presse (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 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.
A truce had been achieved
The airstrikes, which began shortly after 2 a.m. (1 a.m. in France) were still ongoing two hours later, according to AFP journalists in Gaza.
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. This followed the death in an Israeli prison of a leader of this Islamist movement on hunger strike for three months.
The Israeli army announced in statements 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.
