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A militant group allied with Hamas confirmed the deaths, which were part of an increase in fighting in the Palestinian territory during a surge of settler violence.
Oct. 28, 2025, 7:43 a.m. ET
The Israeli military said it had killed three militants near the West Bank town of Jenin on Tuesday. The attacks included an airstrike that local security officials said was the first on the Palestinian territory in months.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, confirmed the deaths in a statement, saying “sniper fire and aerial bombardment” had killed the men but not whether they had been members of the group.
The strike in the Israeli-occupied West Bank came amid continuing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians since a cease-fire three weeks ago in the Gaza Strip. The agreement has been strained by repeated flare-ups of violence and difficulties in the exchange of deceased captives between Israel and Hamas.
And the Israeli-occupied West Bank has experienced record levels of Israeli settler violence, which were on the rise before the war in Gaza but have since become common.
There were conflicting accounts of Tuesday’s strike, which Israel described as a counterterrorism operation. Israel said its military had killed the men in a cave near the village of Kafr Qud, while Palestinian Islamic Jihad said the strike was on a house in a residential area.
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The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy between the two accounts. Security officials from the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank, said it was the first airstrike in the territory since Feb. 8.
The West Bank and East Jerusalem are home to roughly three million Palestinians and about 700,000 Jewish settlers, who live in settlements that most of the international community considers illegal.
During the first half of this year, extremist settlers carried out more than 750 attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and their property, or an average of nearly 130 assaults a month, according to records compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. That is the highest monthly average since the U.N. started collecting such records in 2006.
The Israeli government, which is partly led by longtime settler activists, has increasingly sought to entrench its control of the West Bank since the war in Gaza began.
Political allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged him to annex part of all of the territory, but this month the Trump administration made it clear that it opposed annexation.
Fatima AbdulKarim contributing reporting.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
