JERUSALEM – 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.
Yasser Hanun from the Islamic Jihad group had previously been detained for his involvement in the “terrorist organisation’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 giving further details.
A witness said weapons in the car exploded after the strike on Thursday.
Hanun was involved in several shooting attacks targeting Israeli communities as well as shooting at soldiers and military posts in the West Bank, the army said.
Palestinian news agency Wafa said two people were killed and four others wounded in the strike.
AFP footage showed a car severely burned from the hit, it’s roof torn as if by a can opener.
“Two successive missiles” struck the car, Usayd Shelbi, who witnessed the strike, told AFP.
“The situation was dangerous. The weapons in the car were exploding,” he said.
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 Oct. 7.
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 militants in Gaza.
On Thursday, Israel launched deadly air strikes on Rafah after threatening to send troops in to hunt for Hamas militants in the southern Gaza city where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge.
Another 97 people were killed over the past 24 hours in Hamas-run Gaza, the health ministry said, as a US envoy was in Israel for fresh efforts to secure a truce.
International concern has spiralled over the territory’s escalating civilian death toll and the desperate humanitarian crisis sparked by the war that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, held talks with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv, after meeting with other mediators in Cairo.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was in the Egyptian capital for truce talks earlier this week, the group said.
Mediators including the United States, Qatar and Egypt have tried and so far failed to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal, but this week have been making a new push to break the deadlock.
The Israeli defence ministry said the discussion with McGurk covered returning hostages, “operational developments in Hamas strongholds in central and southern Gaza, and humanitarian aid efforts”, as well as “the “importance of dismantling remaining Hamas battalions”.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists that so far the discussions were “going well.” AFP