11/29/2024–|Last updated: 11/29/202404:43 PM (Mecca time)
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), on Friday claimed responsibility for an ambush that targeted an occupation patrol and a bus near the Ariel settlement north of the city of Salfit in the West Bank, wounding 9 Israelis, including soldiers.
The Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement, “The perpetrator of the heroic operation near the Ariel settlement was the martyr Samer Hussein, who surprised a number of Zionist soldiers inside a bus in Ariel, wounding 9, three of whom were critically injured.”
The statement added that the extremist Israeli government will pay the price for its decisions targeting the West Bank with the blood of its soldiers.
For its part, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority said, “The perpetrator of the Ariel operation is from the village of Ainbus, south of Nablus, and he is 46 years old. He was able to empty three bullet magazines into the bus before the army opened fire on him.”
Palestinian platforms reported the martyrdom of the perpetrator of that operation near Salfit.
For its part, Israeli Army Radio said that the perpetrator arrived from Nablus via a road without checkpoints or inspection and got out of his car with an M16 weapon.
The radio added that the perpetrator had previously served a sentence in Israeli prisons on security grounds.
Israeli Army Radio added that the army believes that several parties are working to turn the West Bank into a central war front, and that estimates indicate that in the coming weeks the volume of reports regarding similar attacks will increase, especially with the approaching month of Ramadan.
The Israeli ambulance confirmed that 3 of the 9 injured were in serious condition, while Israeli media explained that there were wounded soldiers among those injured by the shooting, and that a police patrol was exposed to gunfire in that attack.
Chronology of the implementation of the specific “Ariel” operation by the liberated prisoner and martyr Samer Hussein and its results: pic.twitter.com/h44pCgfUgZ
– Quds News Network (@qudsn) November 29, 2024
The Israeli army said that it was confirmed after combing operations that there was no second gunman, and that the attack was carried out by only one gunman, after Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the army was pursuing a second participant in that shooting operation.
For its part, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported that the bus that was exposed to fire near the Ariel settlement was coming from Tel Aviv.
Scenes from the site of the “Ariel” operation, during which 9 soldiers and settlers, including 3, were seriously injured, and it was carried out by the martyr Samer Hussein, a member of Al-Qassam in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/nmpaIsMJCJ
– Quds News Network (@qudsn) November 29, 2024
The head of the Northern West Bank Settlements Council, Yossi Dagan, said that the occurrence of a very difficult operation on a central street shows the high level of the war of what he described as terrorism waged and funded by the Palestinian Authority, as he put it,
Dagan called on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and senior army leaders to close all security checkpoints, launch military operations on all infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority, collect weapons, and harm its economy because it allows these operations.
The head of the Kedumim settlement council also said – commenting on the shooting in Ariel – that “the time is now appropriate to enter the cities of the West Bank with a large force and search them house by house and cleanse them of weapons and those he described as terrorists,” as he put it.
Operation Ariel comes in light of the occupation’s escalation of its military operations in the cities of the West Bank, in addition to the escalation of settler attacks on Palestinians and their property, in conjunction with the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year, which left tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded and massive destruction.
