Three Palestinian fighters were killed in the night from Sunday to Monday during a new raid by the Israeli army in the north of the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian sources. The Palestinian health ministry says three men, Mohammad Abou-Zaytoun (32), Fathi Abou-Rizk (30) and Abdallah Abou-Hamdane (24), were shot dead in the refugee camp Palestinian from Balata to Nablus.
The Israeli army explained that during the raid, armed suspects shot at the soldiers who returned fire. She added having “neutralized” two gunmen and confiscating three M-16 rifles. Witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the Israeli armed forces carried out overnight raids on several houses in the Balata refugee camp, saying they heard gunfire and loud explosions. A house was demolished, they added.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, said in a statement that the three men were “fighters” of the group. The Palestinian presidency on Monday denounced “a real slaughter”spokesman Nabil Abou Roudeina describing the repeated operations of the Israeli forces in Nablus as “major war crime and a collective punishment that must end immediately”calling “the American administration to intervene immediately to stop the Israeli madness”. These new deaths come against the backdrop of an outbreak of violence between Palestinians and Israelis since the beginning of the year.
Also in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli soldier was lightly injured Sunday night in a ramming attack in Huwara near Nablus, the Israeli army said, adding that the vehicle had fled.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 153 Palestinians, 20 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources . These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and, on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.