West Bank drone strike kills would-be attacker

Two missiles hit the car and killed Yasser Hanun from the Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel’s army said Friday a Palestinian militant on his way to carry out a shooting attack was killed in a drone strike in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin a day earlier.

“Two successive missiles” struck the car, Usayd Shelbi, who witnessed the strike, told Agence France-Presse.

AFP footage showed a car severely burned from the hit, it’s roof torn as if by a can opener.

A witness said weapons in the car exploded after the strike on Thursday.

Palestinian news agency Wafa said two people were killed and four others wounded in the strike.

The resident of Jenin refugee camp “was eliminated while en route to carry out another shooting attack,” the statement from Israel’s army said, without giving further details.

Yasser Hanun from the Islamic Jihad group had previously been detained for his involvement in the “terrorist organization’s military activities,” the army said in a statement.

The drone strike in Jenin came after three Palestinian gunmen opened fire at cars on a congested West Bank highway near a Jewish settlement on Thursday, killing an Israeli man and wounding eight others. The gunmen were killed. The West Bank has seen a surge in violence, to levels unseen in nearly two decades, since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began on 7 October.

Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 400 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began, according to the health ministry in Ramallah.

Islamic Jihad is fighting alongside Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

The Gaza war erupted after an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel which resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an tally based on official figures.