At least six Palestinians killed during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, bombings also took place in the Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinian journalists.
Very early Sunday morning in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli strike left at least six dead in the city of Jenin, according to Hamas, while Israel announced the death of a member of its border police. The Israeli army was carrying out an operation in this town, a bastion of Palestinian resistance.
A man driving a car with Israeli license plates was fatally shot at a busy West Bank intersection on Sunday, hours after Israeli gunfire in Israeli-occupied territory killed six Palestinians and a member of the Israeli paramilitary border police.
The shooting victim was later identified as a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem. The attackers probably mistook him for an Israeli because of the license plates. Over the years, Palestinian militants have carried out dozens of attacks against Israelis in the West Bank, and the army described Sunday’s shooting as just such an incident.
The Magen David Adom rescue service said the attackers fired through the victim’s front windshield. He added that paramedics who arrived at the scene in the central West Bank found the man lifeless in his car.
The Israeli military said security forces were searching the area for the shooter. Israeli media reported that security forces found an abandoned car that was likely used to carry out the attack, and that the suspect fled on foot.
Renewed violence in the occupied West Bank
Hours earlier, a deadly confrontation erupted when Israeli security forces were on patrol looking for roadside bombs in Jenin, a town and adjacent refugee camp of the same name in the northern West Bank.
A roadside bomb exploded near a paramilitary border police vehicle, killing a policewoman and injuring three others, police said.
An Israeli military helicopter targeted Palestinians who were throwing explosives at Israeli vehicles and extracted Israeli forces, the Israeli military said. Seven Palestinians were killed in the airstrike, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Mujahhid Nazal, a doctor at a nearby clinic, said he heard a “loud explosion” and rushed to the scene of the airstrike. “The situation was really dire, seven young men were lying on the ground,” he said. he declared.
At the funeral of six of those killed in Jenin, four of the men were wrapped in the green flags of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has been engaged in a war with Israel in Gaza for three months. The other two were covered, respectively, with the Palestinian flag and the yellow banner of the Fatah movement, rival of Hamas.
These latest events follow an increase in deadly military raids and restrictions imposed on Palestinian residents in the West Bank since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Two Palestinian journalists killed
Hamza Dahdouh, who also worked for the television channel Al Jazeera, and Mustafa Tharaya, an independent journalist, were killed when an Israeli strike hit their car as they were traveling to a mission in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Al Jazeera. A third journalist, Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured.
Amer Abu Amr, a photojournalist, said in a Facebook post that he and another journalist, Ahmed al-Bursh, survived the strike.
Wael Dahdouh, 53, has been the face of Al Jazeera’s 24-hour coverage of this war and previous rounds of fighting for millions of Arabic-speaking viewers across the region, almost always appearing on air with the headset on. blue and the bulletproof vest worn to identify journalists in the Palestinian territories.
Speaking to Al Jazeera after his son’s funeral, Mr Dahdouh promised to continue reporting on the war.
“The whole world must look at what is happening here in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “What is happening is a great injustice for defenseless people, civilians. It is also unfair for us as journalists.”
In a statement, Al Jazeera accused Israel of deliberately targeting reporters and condemned “the continued crimes committed by the Israeli occupying forces against journalists and media workers in Gaza”. She also pledged to take “all legal measures to pursue the perpetrators of these crimes.
