Three members of a “terrorist cell” were eliminated Wednesday night by an Israeli drone strike in the northern occupied West Bank after carrying out an attack there, the Israeli military said. This is the first action of this type carried out by the Israeli army in the West Bank since 2005 and the end of the second intifada, a source within the Palestinian intelligence services told Agence France-Presse.
“Soldiers identified a terrorist cell inside a suspicious vehicle after it opened fire” near Ramallah, a military statement said. “A drone fired at the cell and neutralized it,” the statement added. The strike killed three people, according to an army spokesman. Saying to have his information from the firefighters sent to put out the fire consuming the vehicle, Kamal Abu al-Roub, deputy governor of Jenin (north of the West Bank), told AFP that there were “three dismembered bodies at the ‘inside’ of the car, which he said was hit by “missiles”.
Kamal Abu al-Roub then clarified that the three men were from the Jenin refugee camp, where an Israeli military raid that met strong local resistance on Monday left seven dead. According to the military, “the terror cell had carried out several shooting attacks against (Israeli) communities in the West Bank recently.”
In a statement, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, called the killing of the three men a “dangerous escalation”, adding that this “crime…will not go unpunished.” Located in the governorate of Jenin, Ramallah is a locality very close to the demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank, territory occupied by the Israeli army since 1967.