Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinian fighters in mosque as major West Bank operation continues
Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad announced the death of a top local commander in a West Bank raid
The Israeli military said on Thursday its troops killed five Palestinian fighters, including a well-known local commander, who were hiding inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.
The military said it killed Muhhamad Jabber, known as Abu Shujaa, the head of a network of fighters in the adjacent Nur Shams refugee camp, during a “significant exchange of fire” around a mosque in the city of Tulkarm in which four other Palestinian fighters were also killed.
The Tulkarm division of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing confirmed his death, which brought the total number of Palestinians killed during the past two days to 17, and said fighters had attacked Israeli forces near the Abu Ubaida mosque.
The operation began in the early hours of Wednesday with hundreds of Israeli troops backed by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers raiding the flashpoint cities of Tulkarm, Jenin and areas in the Jordan Valley.
There was also a complete network outage at Jawwal, one of the two main telecommunications companies in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, according to the Reuters witness.