The Qassam Brigades said in a statement that its West Bank-based combatants killed an Israeli soldier at point-blank range in the Jordan Valley on Sunday afternoon, and “returned to their bases safely.”
It added that the shooting operation came in retaliation for the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City that killed more than 100 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others on Saturday. PressTV reported.
The statement noted that Hamas combatants in the occupied West Bank have “renewed their allegiance” to the new leader of the Gaza-based movement Yahya Sinwar.
The Israeli Magen David Adom ambulance service and military said an Israeli settler was killed and another wounded on Sunday by Palestinian gunmen, who opened fire near the Mehola Junction on Route 90, the main north-south artery in the Jordan Valley.
Israeli officials identified the man shot dead as 23-year-old Yonatan Deutsch, from the city of Beit She’an.
Since Israel unleashed a war on the besieged Gaza Strip in early October 2023, casualties have been rising in the West Bank as a result of intensified near-daily Israeli raids into villages and cities in the occupied territories.
According to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, at least 615 Palestinians, including 144 children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the outbreak of the war on Gaza.
At least 39,790 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have also been killed in the Israeli genocidal war against the Gaza Strip during the past 10 months.
SD/