Israelis kill key terror operative; Gaza groups fire more missiles into Israel
RAMALLAH — An Israeli raid killed a senior Palestinian insurgency commander in the West Bank as Islamic Jihad vowed revenge and scores of missiles were fired into Israel territory from Gaza.
Walid Obeidi commander of the Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad, was
killed on Wednesday in the northern West Bank town of Kabatya. Obeidi was
killed and another Jihad operative was arrested during an Israeli military
raid in Kabatya, located south of Jenin.
On Wednesday, Hamas and
Jihad gunners in the Gaza Strip fired 50 Kassam-class, short-range missiles
into Israel, Middle East Newsline reported. On Thursday, another 20 missiles were fired into Israel.
"Walid Anis Yosef Abid Yalid, a 46-year-old Islamic Jihad terror
operative, has been involved in intensive terrorist activity in the Samaria
region since the 1980's," the military said in a statement. "Since 2004, he
was a central figure in the Islamic Jihad which attempted to execute
numerous terrorist attacks within Israel."
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This was the third senior Jihad commander killed in an Israeli operation
in as many months. Obeidi, found with an M-16 assault rifle, was
said to have been responsible for a series of suicide bombings, including
one in which 11 people were killed in Tel Aviv in April 2006.
Obeidi was identified as the Jihad chief in Jenin, the militia's leading
stronghold in the West Bank. He planned several major attacks in 2007 — one
of them a suicide strike on a Tel Aviv bus — that either failed or were
foiled.
