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Several Palestinians killed in West Bank; Israeli raid continues in Jenin

Gun battles rock Jenin area for second day, with at least 10 Palestinians wounded and more than 20 arrested while Israeli forces shoot dead three Palestinians, including two women elsewhere, Palestinian officials say.

AFP

Palestinians confront Israeli troops at the entrance of Nur Shams refugee camp near northern West Bank town of Tulkarem on April 10,2022.

Israeli troops have raided the flashpoint West Bank district of Jenin, home of gunmen who launched two recent deadly attacks in Tel Aviv, as Israeli forces shot and killed three Palestinians and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned his country has "gone on the offensive".

Sunday's military raid entered its second day as Israel buried three civilian victims from last Thursday's shooting spree and Palestinian resistance groups in Jenin warned they were mobilising fighters.

Israeli authorities demanded that Fathi Hazem –– the father of the late 28-year-old Tel Aviv shooter who killed three Israelis –– turn himself in, Israeli and Palestinian media said, as the Jenin refugee camp girded for more battles.

Abu Muadh, the military spokesperson of the armed factions in Jenin's refugee camp, announced a "state of alert" and called for "general mobilisation of our fighters to confront any incursion by the Zionist enemy".

Mosques in Jenin told civilians to vacate the streets, according to local residents.

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, protests were held in solidarity with Jenin, a resistance stronghold that saw a major battle against Israeli troops 20 years ago.

Tensions have surged in the West Bank during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, nearly a year after violence flared in the other Palestinian territory, the Hamas-governed Gaza, leading to 11 days of devastating conflict.

Gun battles rocked the Jenin area for a second day on Sunday, with at least 10 Palestinians wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and more than 20 arrested, according to an Israeli military source.

Several Palestinians shot dead

"The State of Israel has gone on the offensive," Bennett said after a security cabinet meeting, which also approved a $112 million plan to build an additional 40 kilometres of the separation barrier along the occupied West Bank border.

The cabinet also agreed to evaluate a policy to strip the families of "terrorists who are residents and citizens of Israel" of state pensions and other benefits.

In recent weeks, Israel has been stunned by a string of attacks in which a total of 14 people have been killed.

Over the same period, at least 13 Palestinians have been killed, including assailants, according to a count by the AFP news agency.

The latest casualties were two Palestinian women and one man shot dead on Sunday in the occupied West Bank.

Ghada Ibrahim Sabatien was a widowed mother of six in her 40s, according to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa.

Further south in Hebron, a Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli border police.

After night fell, a Palestinian man was shot dead near Bethlehem, said the Palestinian Health Ministry, which named him as 21-year-old Mohammed Ghnaim.

Firing in Jenin

In the Jenin area, Israeli forces confronted relatives of the Tel Aviv gunman, Raad Hazem, who was killed after an hours-long manhunt, and whose family home faces demolition under standard Israeli practice to deter such attacks.

The army claimed that when troops spotted two of his brothers in a car outside the house, they fired at its wheels. The car then sped off and soldiers also shot at another gunman who fired at them from a motorcycle, the army said.

The father, Fathi Hazem, wrote on Facebook that his wife and one son were in the car, charging that Israeli troops tried to "assassinate" them.

SOURCE: AFP