Tamer Kilani was personally involved in numerous shootings in Samaria and recently dispatched a terrorist to Tel Aviv for a mass-casualty attack.
By Pesach Benson, United with Israel
The Lion’s Den terror group is vowing revenge after one of its senior commanders was killed in an explosion in Shechem (Nablus) on Saturday night.
The circumstances of the blast were not clear. Some Palestinian reports say 33-year-old Tamer Kilani was killed by his own explosive while others said he was killed by a booby trapped motorcycle.
Israeli officials have not commented on the incident. A video circulating on social media purporting to show a motorcycle left by a “collaborator” blowing up as Kilani walked past has not been independently verified.
Hebrew media reports said Kilani was personally involved in a number of shooting and grenade attacks against Israelis in Samaria while masterminding others.
Kilani also dispatched a Palestinian with a Carlo submachine gun and two bombs to Tel Aviv in September to carry out a mass-casualty attack. What could have been a massacre was foiled when officers from the elite Yasam anti-terrorism unit in Jaffa spotted the terrorist acting suspiciously.
The militant group Lions den accused #Israel of assassinating one of its fighters by sticking an explosive device on a motorcycle parked off a road by what they claimed an “Israeli collaborator” near the old city of Nablus, video showed the explosion pic.twitter.com/J54gAgke73
— Rushdi Abualouf (@Rushdibbc) October 23, 2022
The Shechem-based Lion’s Den vowed to avenge Kilani.
“We promise the occupation and [IDF Chief of Staff Aviv] Kohavi a severe, agonizing and painful response. We call on every resident who can enter Nablus to participate in his funeral today. Today we gave our land the best of our soldiers. The lions will go one after the other, either to victory or to become a martyr,” said a statement issued by the terror group on Sunday.
The terror group claimed responsibility for killing 21-year-old IDF Staff Sgt. Ido Baruch in a drive-by shooting in October and numerous other attacks. In response to the attacks coming from Shechem, the IDF placed a closure on the city two weeks ago.
What is the Lion’s Den?
The Lion’s Den is a relatively new terror group that opposes the Palestinian Authority and has become too popular for Ramallah to to rein in.
The PA has been unable to crack down on Lions’ Den because so many of its members are former Fatah people rebelling against Mahmoud Abbas. Further, it enjoys Palestinian popularity and legitimacy for “protecting Nablus and Joseph’s Tomb from Israeli forces,” a Palestinian source told Haaretz.
According to Haaretz, the Lions’ Den is mostly made up of young, secular Palestinians, many of whom had been associated with other political or terror factions, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The terror group coalesced in response to a surge of IDF counter-terror operations. The IDF launched Operation Wave Breaker following a series of Palestinian terror attacks in the spring that killed 19 people. The IDF doubled its presence in Judea and Samaria and has staged frequent raids on terror suspects.
In five months, Israeli security forces have arrested more than 1,600 terror suspects and foiled hundreds of attacks.
As a result, the terror group scored popularity points among Palestinians by rejecting a PA demand that Lions’ Den members lay down their weapons and integrate themselves into the PA security services.
It’s not known who funds Lions’ Den. The Jerusalem Post reported many of its members are “from middle-class families and are said to have purchased their weapons with their own money.”
Hamas reportedly compensates Lions’ Den members for propaganda videos posted on social media, particularly TikTok.