An Israeli drone strike on Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, killed three Palestinians on Friday, 28 August, in what appeared to be the first Israeli air strike in the territory since February 2025.
The Israeli military and the Shin Bet internal security service jointly said they conducted the strike, identifying one of those killed as Qais Bitawi, also rendered al-Baitawi, whom they described as a Hamas operative based in Jenin. Xinhua reported that Israeli authorities said weapons were found in the men's vehicle.
The accounts of what exactly was struck differed. Israeli sources described the operation as targeting a car. The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that a drone had struck a house under construction in the western part of Jenin city, according to Al Jazeera.
Hamas condemned the strike and mourned those killed, but did not claim Bitawi as a member. Palestinian Islamic Jihad said he was a senior operative of its armed wing. The affiliations of the two other men killed were not established.
The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance service said Israeli ground troops raided the site after the strike, briefly detained medical personnel, and prevented them from transporting the wounded and the dead to hospital, Al Jazeera reported. The duration of the detention and whether any medics were harmed was not immediately known.
Separate Israeli strikes in Gaza on the same day killed at least five more Palestinians. Three were members of the Abdeen family, struck north of Khan Younis. A fourth man was killed in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City.
The violence came as Nikolay Mladenov, high representative for the US-led Board of Peace, warned that failure by both sides to adhere to the roadmap for peace "threatens a collapse of the ceasefire in Gaza." The Gaza ceasefire took effect in October 2025. Since then, Gaza's Health Ministry has recorded 1,303 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire and 4,336 wounded. The overall toll since October 2023 stands at 73,438 killed and 174,447 wounded, according to the ministry.
Israeli drone strikes in the West Bank have been rare but have grown more frequent since 2022, when Israeli military commanders were authorised to use armed drones for targeted operations in the territory. The Jenin area has been a persistent site of confrontation between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces throughout the broader conflict.
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