West Bank drone strike killed Palestinian f ighter, claims Israel

The Israeli Army said on Friday that a Palestinian fighter 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.

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 resident of Jenin refugee camp “was eliminated while en route to carry out another shooting attack,” the statement said, without elaborating.

Witnesses and residents said the strike also killed 17-year-old Saeed Jaradat.

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

Hanun was involved in several shooting attacks targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank as well as shooting at soldiers and military posts, the army said. Palestinian news agency Wafa said two people were killed and four wounded in the strike.

Video footage showed a car severely burned from the hit, its roof torn as if by a can opener. “Two successive missiles” struck the car, Usayd Shelbi, who witnessed the strike, said.

“The situation was dangerous. The weapons in the car were exploding,” he said.

Crowds of mourners gathered for the funeral of the two men on Friday.

“This occupation bares its fangs clearly ... It rejects the existence of the Palestinian people,” Jamal Haweel, a leader in the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said.

The drone strike in Jenin came hours 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 Oct. 7.