After three armed Palestinian terror suspects were shot and killed by soldiers from a Golani reconnaissance battalion during clashes in the Jenin area overnight between Thursday and Friday, Hamas on Friday urged its followers to escalate their "acts of resistance."
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IDF forces were on operations to find and confiscate illegal weapons and arrests terror suspects. Most of the arrest raids were in Jenin, the hometown of several Palestinian assailants who took part in a recent string of attacks that killed at least 19 Israelis.
As the soldiers approached their first target destination, Palestinians released a heavy volley of gunfire as well as throwing explosives at them. The troops shot back.
On route to the second destination, Golani soldiers spotted a suspicious vehicle at the side of the road, from which shots were fired at the troops. The soldiers engaged, fatally shooting the occupants of the car who had fired at them. When the vehicle was searched, soldiers found two M-16 rifles, a homemade Carlo machine gun, magazines of bullets, and a bulletproof vest.
Footage disseminated on social media showed a Mazda car riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that three Palestinians had been inside. All three were evacuated to a local hospital, where medical staff declared them dead.
The terrorists' bodies were taken out of the hospital and paraded through the streets. A few hundred people began a spontaneous demonstration, after mosques began calling on local residents to take to the streets "because of the shahids' deaths."
During the clashes that developed in response to the IDF's search for illegal guns, eight residents of the Jenin area were injured.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Friday in an interview to Hamas' Al Aqsa TV that "The blood of the shahids in Jenin is new proof of the occupation's crimes. This should be a reason to escalate the acts of resistance, and we should force the enemy to pay for its crimes."
"The killing of three Jenin residents is a crime perpetrated in the framework of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and their land. Total resistance, primarily armed resistance, is the only option that can defend our people and win the battle against the enemy," Barhoum said.
The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah condemned what it called the "execution" and called it an attempt by Israel to "export the political crises in its coalition to the Palestinian area and solve them at the expense of Palestinians' blood as an inseparable part of the official Israeli policy, which aims to blow up the situation."
AP contributed to this report.
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