Two Palestinians, including a doctor, were killed on Friday October 14 by the Israeli army in Jenin, a sector in the north of the occupied West Bank which has been plagued by great tension in recent months, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The Israeli army said it carried out an operation in the refugee camp in this town during which its soldiers came under fire from live ammunition by “armed suspects“.
The Israeli forcesfired back with live ammunition“, added the army, specifying that the people affected had been “identified“. Abdallah Al-Ahmad, a doctor injured in the head by a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers in front of the Jenin hospital, died, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
“Murder”
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh condemned a “murder“, occurred according to him while the doctor was trying to help another Palestinian who had been shot. The latter, identified as Mateen Debaya by the ministry, is also dead, the ministry reported.
The armed wing of the Fatah movement said the doctor was a “commanding officer” of the group, killed during “armed clasheswith Israeli forces. Many soldiers deployed at dawn in the refugee camp, where clashes broke out, reported witnesses and the Wafa agency. Five other people were injured and are in stable condition according to the Palestinian ministry. The Israeli army said that during its operation, a member of the armed Islamist movement Hamas, Diaa Salama, “responsible for recent attacks on security forces and (who) was planning more“, had been arrested.
Several other people were arrested Friday in Jenin and elsewhere in the West Bank, according to the army. “The blood of our martyrs will fuel a new Intifada (Palestinian uprising, editor’s note)said the Hamas movement, which is in power in the Gaza Strip, on Friday.
Multiple operations
Shortly after their deaths, the remains of Abdallah Al-Ahmad and Mateen Debaya were transported through Jenin at a funeral attended by armed men, among others. It was in the Jenin camp that the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who wore a bulletproof vest with the words “hurryand a helmet, was killed in May while covering an Israeli raid. The army acknowledgeda strong possibilityof killing the Al-Jazeera journalist, but not deliberately.
Violence has increased in recent months in the north of the occupied West Bank, particularly in the area of Nablus and Jenin, strongholds of armed groups where the Israeli army has stepped up operations in the wake of deadly anti-Israeli attacks in March and April. These raids, often interspersed with clashes with the Palestinian population, left more than a hundred dead on the Palestinian side, the heaviest toll in the West Bank for nearly seven years, according to the UN.
Read alsoPalestine: “masquerade” trial for the assassins of Nizar Banat
On Wednesday, an 18-year-old Palestinian was killed by the army during clashes that broke out in the Al-Aroub refugee camp, near Hebron (south), while young people protested against Israeli operations. Two Israeli soldiers have also been killed in recent days, sparking a massive manhunt and violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, an area occupied and annexed by Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Thursday that “the security forces will remain mobilized until the terrorists and those who sent them are arrested“, According to a press release. The West Bank is a Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by the Jewish state.