NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) – A senior member of a Palestinian militant group was killed overnight on Sunday in the occupied West Bank in what Palestinians described as a targeted explosion carried out by Israel.
Tamer Kilani, a leader in a group known as the “Den of Lions” in the city of Nablus, where clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli security forces have been occurring almost daily, was killed when a bomb placed on a motorcycle parked nearby was detonated, according to the militant group.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the explosion. A spokesperson told Reuters the military was “operating against terror all the time”.
“The bomb exploded as he passed by and he became a martyr,” said Kilani’s father, Sufian Kilani, who was not at the scene when the bomb went off. “We don’t know whether the bomb was timed or triggered remotely.”
Sunday’s violence follows months of tension that has deepened since Israeli forces began a crackdown in the West Bank in March in response to a series of attacks by Palestinians in Israel.
The “Den of Lions”, a group of Nablus gunmen with loose factional affiliations, in a statement promised to deal Israel “a harsh and painful response”.
(Reporting by Adel Abu Neama in Nablus and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Emily Rose and Alex Richardson)
