The Israeli army said it killed a top Palestinian militant in an air strike in the occupied West Bank, averting a “terrorist attack” he was planning, AFP reports.
Ahmed Abdullah Abu Shalal had been responsible for a “number of terrorist attacks” over the past year, including one in annexed east Jerusalem, the army said.
He was “eliminated in a precision air strike,” it said in a statement that had a video link showing the strike on a vehicle.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said the body of an “unidentified martyr killed by the occupation [Israel] in a bombing of a vehicle” had been received by a hospital in Nablus.
The army said Abu Shalal was killed following intelligence “of his cell’s intentions of carrying out an imminent terrorist attack”.