JERUSALEM: Israeli troops killed two senior Hamas insurgents in an early-morning raid on a house in the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday, a Hamas official said.
A Hamas radio station in the Gaza Strip reported immediately after the operation that one of the men killed was a militant behind a shooting in the Hebron area last month that killed four Jewish residents of a nearby Israeli settlement just as new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were getting under way.
Israeli soldiers surrounded the house before dawn, then pummeled it with light and heavy weapons. The gunfire left the walls pocked with bullet holes, and an AP photographer on the scene saw one body on the street outside.
In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a Hamas official confirmed that both of the men killed were senior members of the group’s armed wing. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the Islamic organization had yet to officially identify them.
The official blamed the Western-backed Palestinian government led by President Mahmoud Abbas, which wields limited power in the West Bank, for enabling the raid by cooperating with Israel. Abbas and Israel both see Hamas as an enemy and have cooperated in cracking down on the group’s members in the West Bank.
Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, issued a statement threatening to avenge the deaths.
The Israeli military confirmed that its troops carried out an operation in Hebron, but provided no further details.
Additional reporting by Ibrahim Barzak and Nasser Shiyoukhi.
