Israel uses drone to kill ‘resistance cell’ in Jenin

The Palestinian Civil Defence announced on Wednesday evening that three Palestinians were killed when a car in which they were travelling was bombed near Al-Jalama checkpoint, north east of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. Civil Defence personnel managed to reach the area and extinguish the flames of the burning vehicle which contained three badly burnt bodies, but the occupation forces did not allow them to remove the bodies.

The Israeli occupation army announced that it had killed a “Palestinian resistance cell” in Jenin using a missile fired from a drone. Its soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the area and closed the roads between Jenin and Nazareth.

According to a spokesman for the occupation army, the vehicle belonged to Palestinian gunmen who had opened fire on an army checkpoint near Jenin. He added that the information about a “suspicious car” was based on intelligence from Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that this was the first assassination carried out in the West Bank by aerial means since 2005. It identified the drone used as a Hermes 450.

“We will take an offensive and proactive approach to combat terrorism, we will use all the means at our disposal and we will exact the heaviest price from every terrorist or terrorist emissary,” said Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant. He added that the targeted group “fired towards Israeli territory, and had previously carried out several shooting attacks.”

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