The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, spoke of a “heroic” attack, speaking of “a first response to the crimes against our people in the Jenin camp” in the occupied West Bank.
A car bombing killed seven people in Tel Aviv (Israel) on Tuesday (July 4th) as the Israeli army continued a large-scale operation in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, in which ten Palestinians were killed.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, welcomed an attack “heroic”speaking “of a first response to the crimes against our people in the Jenin camp”where Israel has been carrying out its largest military operation in the occupied West Bank for several years since Monday.
According to preliminary reports, a car attacked civilians in north Tel Aviv, Israeli police said, adding that they had “neutralized the assailant”. At the scene of the attack, police chief Yaakov Shabtai said the “terrorist” was a West Bank resident shot dead by a passerby. “It appears that the suspect was driving a vehicle going 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”police said.
“Worst raid in five years”
In Jenin, shops remained closed on Tuesday, an AFP correspondent reported, on the second day of an operation mobilizing hundreds of Israeli soldiers in this city and the adjacent refugee camp. The almost deserted streets are strewn with debris and stones, the bitumen is gutted and the roadway is blackened around improvised barricades.
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 Ministry of Health, ten Palestinians were killed and 100 were injured, twenty of them in serious condition. “We received a lot of injuries”notably “by bullets”said Qasem Benighader, a nurse at the Jenin hospital. “This is the worst raid in five years.”