Israeli attacks, including airstrikes on the Jenin refugee camp, have killed at least 12 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in one of the deadliest days in the territory in recent months, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Five people were killed in airstrikes in Jenin on Tuesday, while two others were shot dead by Israeli forces in Kafr Qods in the northern West Bank. A young man was also killed in Bethlehem, according to the Health Ministry.
On Monday evening, three men and a 14-year-old child were killed in the Tubas governorate in the northeast of the occupied territory, health officials said.
According to Tel Aviv Tribune’s Nida Ibrahim, Tuesday morning’s strikes in Jenin come after Israeli forces attacked the area on Monday afternoon, targeting a currency exchange and claiming it was linked to funding for the Hamas group, which rules Gaza.
Ibrahim reported that an Israeli raid sparked an armed confrontation in Aqqaba, near Tubas, on Monday.
“According to local sources, the Palestinians discovered a secret Israeli unit surrounding one of the houses, which led to armed clashes. The Israeli forces then used force against the Palestinians, some of whom did nothing, did not participate,” she said.
Tel Aviv Tribune spoke to Mohaidden Abu Sbaih, a witness to one of the Israeli airstrikes in Jenin, who said Israeli bulldozers appeared in the area, while warplanes appeared overhead.
Within five minutes, he said, the Israeli plane struck a building in the neighborhood.
After the attack, community members located the remains of four people killed in the attack, he added.
“They are gangs,” Abu Sbaih said, referring to the Israeli army.
“Assassination policy”
Fatah, the Palestinian group that runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, condemned the Israeli attacks, saying that “the bloody Israeli policy of assassinations” would not prevent the Palestinian people from defending “their national rights.”
The attacks on Jenin and Tubas confirm “beyond a shadow of a doubt that the extremist occupation government is seeking a systematic escalation, with the approval, support and official bias of the United States, to implement its plans to liquidate the rights of our people and displace them.”
Fatah called on the international community “to play its part in immediately stopping the war of extermination” against the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said Israeli forces arrested 16 people in the West Bank over the past day.
The arrests took place in the governorates of Hebron, Bethlehem, Tubas, Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Jericho and Qalqilya, it said in its latest update.
This brings the total number of Israeli arrests in the West Bank since October 7 to 9,970, the group said.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, 615 Palestinians, including 144 children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
