by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – While still engaged in a war with Hamas in Gaza, and battling Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday carried out a targeted drone strike in Syria and killed Firas Qasem, a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) organization, who was reportedly on his way to attack Israel, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.
In a rare move, the IDF claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s strike, which also killed two other PIJ operatives and Hezbollah operative Muhammad Taha, TOI reports. Israel typically neither confirms nor denies targeted strikes such as this: for example, while the assassination of Hamas chief Haniyeh Ismael in Tehran last month has widely been attributed to Israel, the IDF has neither confirmed nor denied it.
The four men who were killed were understood to be driving from Syria to Lebanon to carry out an attack against Israel on behalf of the Hezbollah Lebanese terror group, TOI reports.
Wednesday’s air strike against Qasem was conducted on the Syrian side of the Beirut-Damascus highway, near the border between Lebanon and Syria, TOI reports.
“Qasem was tasked with building operational plans for the PIJ terror organization in Syria and Lebanon, and took a central part in the recruitment of Palestinian terrorists to the Hezbollah terror organization, for the purpose of carrying out terror operations from Lebanon against the State of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement.
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