Beirut, August 4 (RHC)-- The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has said the Israeli policy of assassination cannot weaken the Palestinian resistance front, denouncing the death of at least nine people, including a local commander of Hamas’s military wing, in two separate Israeli airstrikes in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the PFLP mourned the victims of the deadly assaults near Tulkarm, pledging that the assassinations “will not go unpunished.”  The PFLP noted that the Israeli assassination policy will not discourage the heroic resistance fighters and will not break the will of the Palestinian nation.

It stressed that Israeli targeted killings will instead strengthen Palestinians’ commitment to national principles and rights, and will cement their determination to follow the path of resistance despite crimes, massacres, and all forms of violence.

The PFLP also called on walks of Palestinians in Tulkarm to adhere to the general strike announced by resistance forces in a show of solidarity with the fallen victims.

At least five Palestinians, including a Hamas commander, have been killed in an Israeli drone strike against a vehicle northeast of the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm.  Palestinian medical sources confirmed that one of the people killed in the first attack near Tulkarm on Saturday was Haitham Balidi, leader of the Qassam Brigades in the Nablus area.

Another person was identified by a relative as one of the leaders of al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.  The identities of the other people were not immediately clear.

Family members went to a hospital in Tulkarm to identify the dismembered bodies brought there.

Since Israel unleashed its genocidal war of aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip in early October 2023, casualties have been rising in the West Bank as a result of intensified near-daily Israeli raids into villages and cities in the occupied territories.

More than 570 Palestinians, including 141 children, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or extremist Jewish settlers since the war began. Nearly 10,000 Palestinians have been detained as well.

At least 39,550 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have also been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip over the past ten months during the regime’s genocidal war.