Jenin airstrike kills three militants, Israel says

The Israeli military said it killed three militants on Friday in a rare airstrike in the Jenin area of the northern occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian health ministry said it had been informed that three men in their 20s, including 22-year-old Qais Bitawi, died after they were “targeted by a drone” in Jenin. It said their bodies were being withheld.

The Israeli military named Bitawi as a Hamas operative in a dismantled Jenin militant network. It said he had been involved in directing, funding and carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces, and had maintained ties with Hamas in Gaza and abroad.

The military said the strike also killed two of Bitawi's accomplices and that weapons were found in their vehicle. AFP photos showed Israeli soldiers removing a body from a house under construction on the outskirts of Jenin.

Hamas denounced the strike and said it would bring further anger and confrontation. Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said Bitawi was one of its commanders. The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said Bitawi and the two others killed were its fighters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz congratulated Israeli forces on the operation. Katz said Israel was pursuing what he called an aggressive and proactive policy in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces briefly detained its crews after they arrived at the site, confiscated their medical equipment and ordered them to leave without evacuating any patients.

The Israeli military said the Jenin network had been dismantled during Operation Iron Wall, a large-scale campaign launched in early 2025 against refugee camps in the northern West Bank. As part of the operation, Israeli tanks deployed in Jenin.

The operation has displaced nearly 40,000 people from the camps, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel from Gaza, at least 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank, including several armed fighters, have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Authority data. Official Israeli data shows at least 48 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the same period.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The Oslo Accords in the 1990s granted limited self-rule to the Palestinian Authority, whose ruling Fatah movement is a rival to Hamas.