Reuters – Israeliair strikes on Gaza killed three senior Islamic Jihad commanders and at least nine civilians, including four children, on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, in an operation that drew an immediate threat of retaliation from the militant group.
The air strikes were the latest incident in more than a year of surging violence that has seen repeated Israeli military raids and escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank, amid a spate of Palestinian street attacks against Israelis.
Hours after the Gaza operation, military forces raided the West Bank city of Nablus, one of the focal points of months of confrontation between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters.
Last week brought a bout of cross-border fire after the death in Israeli detention of an Islamic Jihad hunger striker.
Israel said it targeted three leaders of Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed group that is on terrorism watchlists in the West and which commands the second-biggest armed network in Gaza.
