3 (EUROPA PRESS)
Haitham Balidi, the local commander of Hamas’s armed wing in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the vehicle in which he was travelling with four companions, who also died, north of the town.
The lifeless body of Balidi, 25, a local leader of the Ezzeldin al-Qassam Brigades, is so far the only body identified after the Israeli attack. His identity has been confirmed by medical sources at the Martyr Thabet government hospital to the newspaper ‘Filastin’, which is close to the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The Palestinian Information Centre also believes that Ahmed al-Shabbagh, another local commander, this time from the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, may have been killed in the attack, although this information is pending verification.
Earlier, in a brief message on its social media account X, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed to have carried out an airstrike in the same town against a car carrying a “terror squad.”
Palestinian factions of National Action in Tulkarem have declared a general strike for the “martyrs” and condemned Israel’s “cowardly crime of cold-blooded murder”, also blaming the international community.
Since the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian militias that left around 1,200 dead and nearly 240 kidnapped, more than 560 Palestinians have died as a result of the Israeli offensive in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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