Fourteen people killed in ‘unprecedented’ Israeli raid in occupied West Bank

Footage of the assault shows military vehicles and soldiers roaming the alleys of the camp, where nearly 7,000 people live.

Alongside the war in Gaza, violence continues in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent announced on Saturday April 20 that 14 people had been killed in an Israeli raid which began Thursday evening on the Nour Shams camp, near the town of Tulkarem.

Israeli army earlier said it killed 10 people and arrested eight others in raid “anti-terrorist”. She says these operations target Palestinian armed groups, but civilians are often among the victims. Saturday evening, 48 hours after its incursion into this camp, a frequent target of these frequently deadly raids, the army withdrew, AFP journalists noted.

Among the victims, Qais Fathi Nasrallah, 16, died after being “hit in the head by Israeli fire”, the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the Palestinian Wafa news agency said on Friday. Salim Faisal Ghanem, 30, was “killed by Israeli troops”, adds Wafa. Traders went on strike on Saturday in Tulkarem to protest against this raid.

“Snipers on the roofs”

Footage of the assault shows military vehicles and soldiers roaming the alleys of the camp, where nearly 7,000 people live. After the departure of the Israeli military on Saturday afternoon, rescuers rushed to the aid of a handcuffed Palestinian, the soles of his feet lacerated, lying on a sidewalk, shows the Palestinian Red Crescent on X.

The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry earlier reported “several people killed and injured inside the camp, but the army [israélienne] prevents medical teams from helping the injured”. The IDF conducted house-to-house raids in several neighborhoods of the camp, noted the AFP correspondent.

Residents told the French news agency that they had been deprived of electricity and began to run out of food, being unable to enter or leave the camp. Supplies of milk for children were running out, and chronically ill people, particularly patients needing dialysis, were unable to receive care.

“The Israelis want to silence Palestinian resistance,” says MP

“This incursion is unprecedented”, lamented the head of the commission to resist colonization and the wall, an entity dependent on the Palestinian Authority. Muayad Shaaban evokes “snipers on the roofs and special forces deployed”. “The Israelis want to silence Palestinian resistance in the West Bank, especially in the northern camps”Palestinian MP Hassan Khuraisha told AFP.

The Nour-Shams raid comes against a backdrop of intensifying violence in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, following Hamas terrorist attacks and the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, on October 7. Since then, in this territory, at least 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers. Nine Israelis, including five members of the security forces, lost their lives, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.