3 Islamic Jihad leaders killed in Israel strikes on Gaza

The Israeli army said it killed three leaders of the Islamic Jihad militant group Tuesday in air strikes on Gaza, which left a dozen dead according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

The ministry said that women and children were among the dead, publishing a list of names without ages or detailing any affiliations.

An AFP journalist in Gaza saw the top of a building on fire immediately after the strikes as well as ambulances evacuating victims.

The Israeli army said it had targeted three leaders of Islamic Jihad, which it considers a terrorist organisation, and had hit "weapon manufacturing sites" belonging to the group.

Army spokesman Richard Hecht told journalists the force "achieved what we wanted to achieve" in the overnight strikes, which he said involved 40 aircraft.

The group confirmed three senior officials were killed, naming them in a statement as Jihad Ghannam, secretary of the Al-Quds Brigades military council, and Khalil al-Bahtini, also of the council and commander of the military wing in northern Gaza.

The third, Tareq Ezzedine, was described by Islamic Jihad as "one of the heads of military action" in the occupied West Bank who operated from Gaza.

In Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, an AFP photographer saw the body of a man identified as Ghannam.

"We mourn the leaders and their wives and a number of their children who were killed in a cowardly Zionist crime," Islamic Jihad said in a statement, vowing "the blood of martyrs will increase (the) resolve" of the movement.

An AFP photographer saw a boy's body in the morgue of Gaza City's Shifa hospital, where mourners had gathered.

Asked by journalists about child casualties, Hecht said: "If...