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Israeli soldiers take positions during an Israeli raid in Tulkarem in the north of the occupied-West Bank on October 26, 2024. (Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH / AFP)
The Israeli military said its forces killed a Palestinian militant who belonged to Hamas’s armed wing during a raid on Saturday in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem.
In a joint statement, the Israeli military, police and domestic security agency Shin Bet said that they conducted a “counterterrorism operation in Tulkarem to eliminate Islam Odeh”, who they accused of planning “terror attacks”.
The statement said that during the operation, Odeh “opened fire at the security forces, who encircled him and returned fire”, killing him.
“The forces located weaponry, including compounds used to produce IEDs, in his vehicle”, they said.
Odeh had recently been “tasked with commanding the terrorist network in Tulkarem and had started to plan additional terror attacks”, after another Hamas militant, Zahi Oufi, was killed in an Israeli strike.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, mourned the death of “commander and leader of the Qassam Brigades’s Tulkarem Battalion, Islam Jamil Odeh (from Tulkarem Camp)” in a statement on Saturday.
An AFP journalist who witnessed the scene saw Odeh shot in the stairway of the building Israeli forces besieged. Odeh was visible from the outside due to large holes caused by explosions in the building’s cinder block facade.
“God is the greatest,” Odeh could be heard yelling before shots were fired in his direction.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry said in a statement that it had been informed of the death of 29-year-old Odeh, “shot by occupation forces in the Salam neighbourhood of Tulkarem.”
In a statement published by the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas official Mahmud Mardawi “mourned the martyr Al-Qassam fighter Islam Odeh, who was killed after clashing with occupation forces that besieged him for hours in a house in Tulkarem camp.”
“The assassination policy will not bring security to (Israel), nor will it succeed in breaking our people’s resolve or their commitment to resistance.”
Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October last year triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
Since the Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 744 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
