In a statement on Saturday, al-Qassam Brigades, as the armed wing is known, said it “affirms that the blood of its martyred commanders will only herald a torrent of blood for the occupier.”
Such retaliation, it added, would come “through more high-profile operations that will be carried out by Qassam combatants from all the parts of the occupied West Bank,” PressTV reported.
Earlier in the day, al-Qassam had announced that airstrikes carried out by Israeli drones against a vehicle traveling in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank had resulted in the martyrdom of the commanders, whom it identified as Rafaat Mahmoud Dawasi and Ahmed Walid Abu Ora.
It referred to Dawasi as the armed wing’s commander in Jenin and Abu Ora as another one of the unit’s senior military figures.
“Together, they executed and planned several qualitative operations [against the occupying regime] in the last three months,” al-Qassam added.
The assassinations came less than a month after a targeted killing operation carried out by the regime against Tehran, which led to the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh, former leader of Hamas’ Political Bureau. Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The movement has asserted that the atrocity would not go unanswered, while the Islamic Republic has pledged to avenge Haniyeh’s blood through pending “harsh revenge.”
Before his assassination, Haniyeh used to lead the movement’s negotiation team to talks held in the Qatari capital Doha aimed at bringing about a truce in the regime’s October 7-present war on the Gaza Strip that has so far claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians.
SD/