Israeli forces killed a local commander of the Islamist movement Hamas in the flashpoint city of Jenin on Friday as they pressed a major operation in the occupied West Bank for a third day, the Israeli military said.
The military said Border Police forces had killed Wassem Hazem, who it said was the head of Hamas in Jenin and was involved in shooting and bombing attacks in the Palestinian territory.
Two other Hamas gunmen who tried to escape the car they were all travelling in were killed by a drone, it said. Weapons, explosives and large sums of cash were found in the vehicle, it said.
Hamas confirmed the death of all three men, who it said were members of its Al-Qassam Brigades armed wing.
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In the village of Zababdeh, just outside Jenin, a burnt-out car riddled with bullet holes stood against a wall where the driver crashed the vehicle after being pursued by an Israeli special forces unit, residents said.
Village resident Saif Ghannam (25), said one of the two other men who escaped from the vehicle was killed just outside his house by a small drone strike that shattered the windows, while a second man was killed a short distance away. He said Israeli forces had removed the bodies but large pools of blood lay on the ground where he said the men were killed.
The incident occurred as Israeli forces kept up a large-scale operation involving hundreds of troops and police that was launched in the early hours of Wednesday morning in Jenin and Tulkarm, another volatile city in the northern West Bank, as well as the Jordan Valley.
Israeli armoured personnel carriers backed by helicopters and drones pushed into Jenin and Tulkarm on Friday while armoured bulldozers ploughed up roads to destroy roadside bombs planted by the militant groups.
The escalation in hostilities in the West Bank takes place as fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants still rages in the Gaza Strip nearly 11 months since it began, and clashes with the Iranian-backed Hizbullah movement in the Israel-Lebanon border area have intensified.
In the first two days of the West Bank operation, at least 17 Palestinians were killed, including the local commander of the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad forces in Tulkarm.
Israel’s military, in a summary of its operations, said: “So far, the forces have eliminated 20 terrorists in exchanges of fire and air strikes and apprehended 17 suspects linked to terrorist activities.”
Since the Hamas attack on Israel last October that triggered the Gaza war, more than 660 Palestinians – combatants and civilians – have been killed in the West Bank, according to Palestinian tallies, some by Israeli troops and some by Jewish settlers who have carried out frequent attacks on West Bank Palestinian communities.
Israel says Iran provides weapons and support to militant factions in the West Bank – under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Middle East war – and the military has as a result cranked up its operations there.
The British government said on Friday it was “deeply concerned” by Israel's operation in the West Bank and said there was an urgent need for de-escalation.
“We recognise Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure,” a foreign office statement said.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7th when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed over 40,600 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice that Israel denies.
United Nations officials are preparing to launch a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza on Sunday that will rely on a series of limited pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants holding out in the besieged enclave.
The World Health Organisation says it will need to vaccinate at least 90 per cent of the children in Gaza for the campaign to succeed.
The campaign has been organised after the WHO said on August 23rd that a baby had been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years, and UN agencies appealed for an urgent vaccination effort.
The planned pauses are unconnected with negotiations that have been under way for months to try to agree a halt in the fighting in Gaza and a return of Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
– Reuters