Occupied West Bank (QNN) - Israel carried out a rare aerial assassination in the occupied West Bank on Friday evening, striking a building in the western area of Jenin with a drone and killing three Palestinians, among them a commander of the Qassam Brigades.
An Israeli drone targeted a house under construction in the western part of Jenin city, according to local sources, in a strike that killed three Palestinians and wounded others. Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances rushed toward the scene, but Israeli military vehicles raided the area immediately after the strike and prevented the medical crews from reaching the wounded, leaving the casualties without any possibility of rescue. As it has done repeatedly in Gaza, Israel blocked the ambulances so that those who might have survived were left to bleed to death at the site.
The use of aircraft and drones to carry out assassinations in the occupied West Bank remains rare. While Israel relies overwhelmingly on air power in its genocide in Gaza, its killings in the West Bank are usually carried out by ground forces and undercover units. Between October 2023 and early 2025, the Israeli occupation army carried out scores of airstrikes in the occupied West Bank, but such attacks have since become infrequent, making Friday's strike a notable escalation in the tools Israel is willing to deploy against Palestinians in the territory.
The strike is part of an intensifying Israeli military campaign across the northern occupied West Bank, and Jenin in particular, where Israeli forces have waged repeated large-scale assaults, displaced tens of thousands of residents from the refugee camp, demolished homes, and moved to establish permanent military positions. The escalation to air assassinations in Jenin signals a further hardening of Israel's war on the occupied West Bank, carried out under the same logic and with the same disregard for Paletinian life that has defined its genocide in Gaza.
