Four Palestinians were killed on Thursday during an undercover daytime Israeli counterterrorism raid in Jenin in Samaria.
Members of the Border Police’s elite Yamam National Counter Terror Unit entered the Palestinian-controlled city and “neutralized” two wanted terrorists after receiving intelligence about their whereabouts, Israeli security forces said.
Authorities identified two of the fatalities as Nidal Hazem, a senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Youssef Khuraim from Hamas.
The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry named the other two fatalities as Omar Awadin and Luay al-Zughair, whose affiliations were not immediately clear.
According to Israeli authorities, Hazem was involved in “significant terrorist activity,” and Khuraim in the production of bombs and shootings at IDF soldiers in Judea and Samaria.
Hazem is reportedly related to Ra’ad Hazem, who last April killed three people in a terrorist shooting on Dizengoff Street in central Tel Aviv.
No Israeli personnel were injured in the operation.
Last Thursday, IDF troops operating in Jenin killed the terrorist who on Feb. 26 shot dead at point-blank range brothers Hallel Menachem and Yagel Yaakov Yaniv in the Arab village of Huwara, which is located outside Nablus.
Palestinian officials said Abdel Fattah Hussein Kharousha, 49, was killed in the exchange. He is suspected of gunning down the Yanivs while they were stuck in a traffic jam on Route 60 in Huwara.
Israel has been experiencing a wave of deadly Palestinian terrorism.
On Feb. 27, Palestinian terrorists killed Israeli-American Elan Ganeles near the Beit Ha’arava Junction close to Jericho in the Jordan Valley. A native of Connecticut, Ganeles served in the IDF from July 2016 to August 2018. He was living in Manhattan and had traveled to the Jewish state to celebrate a friend’s wedding.
Earlier in February, a terrorist attack in Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood claimed the lives of Yaakov Israel Paley, 5; his brother, Asher Menachem Paley, 7; and 20-year-old Alter Shlomo Lederman. Three days later, Border Police Staff Sgt. Asil Sawaed, 22, died from wounds sustained in a terrorist attack at a checkpoint to Shuafat in Jerusalem.
On Jan. 27, seven people were killed and several others were wounded in a terrorist shooting rampage at a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday that progress is being made in the investigation into the highway bombing near Megiddo earlier this week that seriously wounded a man.
Israeli authorities revealed Wednesday evening that the roadside bomb was planted by a terrorist who infiltrated the country from Lebanon. He was later killed by Israeli forces while trying to return to that country.
The IDF has not yet named who it believes dispatched the terrorist, but it is not ruling out Hezbollah.
