These deaths come after a new day of violence between Palestinians and Israeli forces around the esplanade of the Mosques.
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New deadly clashes in the West Bank. Israeli forces made arrests on Saturday April 30 in the northern occupied West Bank and reinforced their presence there to find the perpetrators of a deadly attack claimed by a Palestinian group. On Friday evening, two assailants shot and killed a guard in his twenties who was on duty outside one of the entrances to the Israeli settlement of Ariel located in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. The identity of the victim has not been disclosed.
The assailants fled by car and the Israeli forces immediately launched an operation to find them.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, on Saturday. “We claim responsibility for the heroic operation in the settlement of Ariel in which a Zionist (Israeli, editor’s note) officer was killed. It was carried out in response to violations committed by the occupation government in Jerusalem”the group said in a statement.
Saturday, Dozens of Palestinians take part in the funeral of a Palestinian man in his twenties who was shot dead before dawn during an Israeli army operation in the locality of Azzounabout twenty kilometers from Ariel. Asked by AFP, an army spokeswoman said the operation in Azzoun was linked to the manhunt for “find the terrorists who carried out the attack on Ariel”.
These two deaths come after new violence between Israeli police and Palestinians on the esplanade of the Mosques, in East Jerusalem, during the “Day of Al-Quds” (Jerusalem in Arabic). Palestinian Red Crescent Society says 42 Palestinians injured “during clashes with the occupying forces”, 22 of whom were hospitalized. Over the past two weeks, clashes have left nearly 300 Palestinians injured in and around the esplanade of the Mosques.
The violence comes in a context of escalation after a series of anti-Israeli attacks that left 15 dead, including an Israeli Arab policeman and two Ukrainians, since March 22. In the aftermath, 27 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs (including assailants) were killed during operations by Israeli forces in the West Bank.