News - Middle East: As many as nine illegal settlers have been wounded, three of them seriously, in a shooting operation targeting a bus near the city of Salfit in the central part of the occupied West Bank amid the Israeli regime’s ongoing war of genocide against the Gaza Strip and escalated aggression towards the occupied territory.

The resistance operation took place on Friday, targeting the vehicle at the Giti Avishar junction near the illegal settlement of Ariel near the city.

“The executor of the operation was shot and is seriously wounded,” a resistance media outlet, meanwhile, reported.

‘Kill them wherever you overtake them’

Later, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas released a statement, claiming responsibility.

"And kill them wherever you overtake them, and expel them from wherever they have expelled you," it wrote at the beginning of the statement.

“During this operation, one of our heroic fighters ambushed a group of Zionist soldiers and settlers inside a bus, injuring nine, three of them critically,” the armed wing said.

It identified the executor of the operation as 46-year-old Samer Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, announcing that he had been martyred during the retaliatory mission.

“With the utmost pride and honor, al-Qassam Brigades exalt to our great people and our steadfast nation the martyrdom of the heroic executor of this operation,” al-Qassam added.

The brigades said it “emphasizes that every decision written with the ink of the extremist Zionist government targeting the West Bank will be paid for with blood spilled from the bodies of soldiers and settlers in every governorate of the West Bank.”

The developments came amid the unabated Israeli war that has so far claimed the lives of more than 43,391 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

=Following the brutal military onslaught, the regime also escalated its campaign of deadly aggression and rampant arrests across the West Bank that has so far killed at least 732 other Palestinians and led to the apprehension of more than 4,700 others.

The regime’s more extremist politicians have, meanwhile, been ordering preparations for the annexation of the West Bank as they hope that the incoming administration of United States President Donald Trump would recognize Tel Aviv’s push for “sovereignty” over the occupied territory.

Gaza’s resistance movement and their fellow factions in the West Bank have been responding with increasingly daring retaliatory strikes against Israeli targets.

Earlier this month, at least two Israeli forces sustained injuries when a Palestinian carried out a car-ramming operation in the south-central part of the occupied territory.

Source: Press TV