WEST BANK – Israel carried out an air strike in Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, saying Hamas was using a mosque as a “terrorist compound”.
Palestinian Authority (PA) officials said two people died when the Al-Ansar mosque was hit.
Although the Israeli military regularly raids targets in the West Bank, it rarely uses air strikes there like it does against Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Pictures from the scene showed rubble and significant damage to the building.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said those killed were from the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups and were organising an “imminent terror attack”.
It said the compound they were using was under the mosque and had been in use since July. It released images of what it said were entrances to the compound, alongside images of weapons, computers and security measures pictured at the site.
The IDF did not confirm whether a plane, helicopter or drone had been used in the Jenin strike on Sunday, but Israeli media reported that it was a fighter jet.
The reports said that, if confirmed, it would be only the send time in about two decades that a fighter jet had hit a target in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry says two other Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank overnight. It brings the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 7 October to 89.
The PA governs parts of the West Bank that are not under full Israeli control. President Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of the PA and the Fatah political party.
The Gaza Strip is run by Fatah’s rival Hamas, which carried out deadly attacks on Israeli military posts and kibbutzim near Gaza on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages into Gaza.
Israel has been carrying out an intensive air bombardment of Gaza ahead of an expected ground offensive there and has vowed to destroy Hamas as an organization.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says 55 more Palestinians in Gaza were killed in Israeli air strikes overnight and that more than 4,300 have been killed in total since Oct. 7, more than half of them women and children. (BBC)
