The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, has claimed responsibility for a retaliatory shooting operation in the strategic Jordan Valley of the occupied West Bank, as tensions are rising in the territory amid relentless Israeli offensives against the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Qassam Brigades said in a statement that its West Bank-based fighters killed an Israeli soldier at point-blank range in the Jordan Valley on Sunday afternoon, and “returned to their bases safely.”
It added that the shooting operation came in retaliation for the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City that killed more than 100 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others on Saturday.
The statement noted that Hamas fighters in the occupied West Bank have “renewed their allegiance” to the new leader of the Gaza-based movement Yahya Sinwar.
The Israeli Magen David Adom ambulance service and military said an Israeli settler was killed and another wounded on Sunday by Palestinian gunmen, who opened fire near the Mehola Junction on Route 90, the main north-south artery in the Jordan Valley.
Israeli officials identified the man shot dead as 23-year-old Yonatan Deutsch, from the city of Beit She’an.
