RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israel said on Saturday it had killed two senior Hamas fighters in an airstrike on a car in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, accusing them of being involved in the killing of an Israeli.
A joint statement from the Israel Security Agency and the Israel Defense Forces identified the militants as Ahmed Abu Ala and Rafet Dawasi, both from the northern district around Jenin in the West Bank.
Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades military wing said in a statement that it mourned the deaths of two of its fighters in a vehicle in an Israeli airstrike in Jenin.
An Israeli statement said the two militants were involved in planning the shooting last week that killed Israeli man Yonatan Deutsch in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.
Israeli authorities said at the time that Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a highway in the occupied West Bank on August 11, killing one person and wounding another.
Later the same day, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced that its West Bank-based fighters had killed an Israeli soldier at close range near the Mehola settlement in the Jordan Valley and had “safely returned to their base.”
Hamas said the operation was in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza city, which killed at least 90 people, according to the civil defense agency.
Violence in the West Bank has intensified since war in Gaza broke out in October between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, with an increase in Israeli raids, Jewish settler violence and Palestinian street attacks.
Israeli settlers attacked a village near the West Bank city of Qalqilya on Thursday, killing at least one Palestinian, in actions condemned by the United States, Britain and France.
The latest violence in the West Bank comes as new talks in Doha aimed at ending 10 months of fighting in Gaza are due to resume next week.
The war in Gaza and escalating violence in the West Bank risk spilling over into a broader regional conflict involving Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
