Eleven Palestinians killed in two-day Israeli raid on West Bank

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Armed Palestinians take positions during an Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on May 21, 2024. — AFP pic

JENIN (Palestinian Territories), May 23 — Israeli forces carried out raids in the West Bank city of Jenin for a second day yesterday, an AFP correspondent reported, with at least 11 Palestinians killed in the fighting.

Smoke billowed over the city’s refugee camp in the afternoon, with explosions and gunfire heard from inside, while soldiers in Israeli armoured vehicles fired at masked youths in the city centre, the correspondent said.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 11 people including four children, and wounded 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.

An AFP correspondent on Tuesday saw four bodies at Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman government hospital morgue.

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Israel’s army said on Wednesday troops had “exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces”.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from the government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday.

A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.

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The Israeli army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.

Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, medics and military officials said at the time.

Streets near the entrance to the Jenin camp were deserted on Wednesday afternoon, with drones buzzing overhead.

On the outskirts of the town, Israeli armoured vehicles were parked near a roundabout, while agricultural workers toiled on a farm across the road.

Bastion of armed groups

Palestinian group Hamas called the raid a “massacre” and deemed it “conclusive evidence of the criminal mentality that rules the occupying state and its ideological belief in killing our people”.

The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned the raid, saying in a statement on Wafa that Israel was “killing innocent people, doctors, and destroying the infrastructure of Palestinian hospitals, cities and villages”.

Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups, and the Israeli army routinely carries out raids into the city and adjacent camp.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially so since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7.

At least 517 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The Gaza Strip has been gripped by more than seven months of war since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. — AFP