A car-ramming attack injured 7 on Tuesday (July 4th) in Tel Aviv, as the Israeli army continued a large-scale operation in which 10 Palestinians were killed in the northern occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, welcomed an attack “heroic”, speaking “of a first response to crimes against [son] people in Jenin camp”where Israel has been carrying out its largest military operation in the West Bank since Monday in several years.
According to preliminary reports, a car attacked civilians in north Tel Aviv on Tuesday, injuring 7, Israeli police said, adding they had “neutralized the assailant”. At the scene of the attack, police chief Yaakov Shabtai said the “terrorist” was a West Bank resident who was shot dead by a passerby. “It appears that the suspect was driving a vehicle going from south to north, drove into pedestrians who were on a shopping street and got out of his vehicle to stab civilians with a sharp object”according to the police.
In Jenin, overflown by drones, shops remained closed on Tuesday, reported an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent, on the second day of an operation mobilizing hundreds of Israeli soldiers in this city and the camp of adjacent refugees. The almost deserted streets are strewn with debris and stones, the bitumen is gutted and the roadway is blackened around improvised barricades.
Ten Palestinians killed in the West Bank
The army announced that it had struck “a joint operations center” of a local armed group, the Jenin Brigade, an arms depot, a site “of observation and recognition” and a cache used by suspected perpetrators of attacks on Israeli targets. “One hundred and twenty Palestinian suspects” have been apprehended since Monday while “that around 300 armed terrorists are still in Jenin, most of them in hiding”the army said.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, 10 Palestinians were killed and 100 injured, 20 of whom are in serious condition. The city of Jenin and the refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli operations. The northern West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has seen a recent wave of attacks on Israelis as well as anti-Palestinian violence by Jewish settlers.
“Our forces entered the nest of terrorists in Jenin (…)they are destroying command centers and seizing a considerable quantity of weapons”, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Monday. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has denounced “an open war against the population in Jenin”.
“The worst raid for five years”
The fighting caused the exodus on Monday evening of“about 3,000” residents of the camp, where some 18,000 Palestinians live, according to the deputy governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al-Roub. “We received a lot of injuries”notably “by bullets”said Qasem Benighader, a 35-year-old nurse at Jenin hospital: “This is the worst raid for five years. »
According to a doctor at the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, the wounded died because they were not treated in time. “Some died, others saw their condition worsen”Doctor Tawfeek Al-Shobaki testified on Tuesday, adding that the destruction committed by the Israeli forces around the camp made it more difficult for vehicles to circulate.
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In June, 7 people were killed during an Israeli raid against the Jenin camp. Shortly after, four Israelis were shot dead by two Palestinians near the Jewish settlement of Eli in the northern West Bank. “All options are on the table to strike the enemy”, warned the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas leader Ishmael Haniyeh denounces an Israeli operation ” brutal “.
The Arab League announced an emergency meeting on Tuesday while Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, Arab countries with diplomatic ties with Israel, denounced the operation. Violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed at least 187 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, 1 Ukrainian and 1 Italian since the beginning of the year, according to an AFP count established from official sources.