At least 13 Palestinians — including the three senior Islamic Jihad leaders, their wives and several of their children —have been killed during airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, according to officials.
Palestinian health officials said eight women and children were among the dead and another 20 people were injured in the explosions which were heard as far away as Rafah, on Gaza's southern border with Egypt.
The strikes early this morning were the deadliest since three days of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad last August.
Those killed were Khalil Bahtini, the Islamic Jihad commander for the northern Gaza Strip; Tareq Izzeldeen, the group's intermediary between its Gaza and West Bank members; and Jehad Ghanam, the secretary of the Islamic Jihad's military council.
The Russian diplomatic delegation in Ramallah, in the West Bank, said that Khaswan was a Russian national.
The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, which is smaller than Gaza's ruling Hamas group, confirmed the three were among the dead.
The attacks hit the top floor of an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern town of Rafah.
Tor Wennesland, the United Nations envoy to the Mideast, said he was “deeply alarmed" and condemned the civilian deaths, calling on all sides “to exercise maximum restraint.”
Egypt, Jordan and Turkey have also all hit out at Israel and condemned the rocket barrage.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh warned that Israel will “pay the price” for the killings.
He continued: “Assassinating the leaders with a treacherous operation will not bring security to the occupier, but rather more resistance."
Army spokesman Richard Hecht said that his forces "achieved what we wanted to achieve" in the overnight strikes, which he said involved 40 aircraft.
The Israeli military claimed that Ghannan coordinated weapons and money transfers between the group and Hamas.
Bahtini was "responsible for the rocket fire toward Israel in the past month", Israel claimed.
Ezzedine was recently "planning and direction multiple attacks against Israeli" civilians in the West Bank - where he was from.
"Without any prior notice, I heard heavy explosions shaking my house, and before I could comprehend what was going on around me, all the windows and walls were shattered on the ground, while black clouds covered the place preventing me from doing anything," Islam Afifi, a Gaza-based mother of four neighbouring Miral, said to TNA.
The airstrikes came at a time of boiling tensions between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip.
It is linked, in part, to increasing violence in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has been conducting near-daily raids for months to detain Palestinians suspected of planning or carrying out attacks on Israelis.
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 of lands they seek for a future independent state.
Tuesday's deaths bring to 120 the number of Palestinians killed by Israel so far this year.
Nineteen Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP count based on official sources from the two sides.
