Israeli Commander Killed During West Bank Escalation

An Israeli military commander has been killed during the regime’s now-four-day-old deadly escalation across the occupied West Bank.

In a statement on Saturday, the Israeli army said 20-year-old Elkana Navon “fell during operational activity” in the city of Jenin in northern West Bank earlier in the day, describing the fatality as a “squad commander.”

Another trooper was “severely injured” in the same incident, it added.

The statement described the incident as an encounter that took place between the Israeli forces, who had invaded a house in the city’s refugee camp, and Palestinian resistance fighters.

Saturday marked the fourth day of the escalation by the regime, which has seen its forces bringing various areas across the West Bank, especially those lying in its northern parts, under intensified airstrikes and ground attacks.

Also on Saturday, Herzi Halevi, Israeli army chief of staff, who was visiting Jenin, said the regime’s attacks featured going “from city to city, refugee camp to refugee camp, with excellent intelligence, with very good operational capabilities, with a very strong air intelligence envelope…”

At least 22 Palestinians have been killed so far during the escalation.

Reacting to the massacres, the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has warned that the regime was seeking to expand its October-present genocidal war on Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of at least 40,691 Palestinians, to the West Bank.

On Friday, however, the Islamic Jihad, Hamas’ fellow Gaza-headquartered resistance group asserted that the Israeli aggression would only further embolden the resistance in its ongoing endeavor to liberate the Palestinian territories from Israeli occupation.

Such crimes, the group said, “will not achieve its (the regime’s) goals, but will only increase our determination and resolve to resist until the occupation is expelled from our land.”

Source: Press TV