(Jenin) An Israeli raid, which began Tuesday morning on the town of Jenin in the West Bank and left eleven dead, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, was still underway on Wednesday, AFP journalists reported.
While Tuesday had been punctuated by the buzz of drones and the sound of detonations, explosions and gunshots rang out again on Wednesday inside the eponymous refugee camp in this town in the northern West Bank that has been occupied since 1967, as reported by AFP journalists.
An armored Israeli forces vehicle patrolled the town, driving behind a bulldozer on a main road in Jenin.
The Israeli army said in a statement “continue its operation in Jenin” during which it killed “a number of terrorists” and found explosives placed under roads.
“The martyrdom of the child Waseem Ahed Jaradat (15 years old) in Jenin brings the number of martyrs from the occupation’s aggression against the city since Tuesday to 11 including 4 children,” said the government’s Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority, which sits in the West Bank, in a press release.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent claimed that one of its ambulances had been the target of Israeli fire while trying to help a wounded man in Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups.
On Tuesday, AFP journalists saw the bodies of four people killed during the Israeli military incursion.
In the evening, exchanges of fire broke out between Israeli soldiers and masked and armed men, AFP journalists noted.
The Israeli army announced in a press release that it was carrying out an operation, based on intelligence “concerning terrorist activities carried out by armed men belonging to the terrorist organizations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Jenin region”.
She reported “numerous exchanges of fire” between her forces and “armed terrorists”. “During the exchanges, uninvolved people would have been affected,” she added, saying she was “examining these allegations”.
” Lost bullet ”
Many stores kept their iron shutters drawn.
Amer Manasra, a 25-year-old independent Palestinian journalist, told AFP from his hospital bed that he was hit in the back of the leg by a stray bullet fired by Israeli forces, adding that the incident had place near the entrance to the camp.
PHOTO RANEEN SAWAFTA, REUTERS
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a surgeon working at the Jenin government hospital was among the dead. “Oussayed Jabarine was killed by fire from Israeli soldiers while he was on his way to the hospital,” the ministry wrote in a statement.
The official Palestinian Wafa agency said a schoolteacher, Allam Jaradat, and a minor were also among the seven dead.
Due to the Israeli operation, schools in the city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp were evacuated, according to Wafa.
Later, schoolchildren gathered at a mosque east of Jenin for the funeral of Allam Jaradat, wrapped in the green flag of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the raid, saying in a statement that Israel was “killing innocent people, doctors, and destroying the infrastructure of Palestinian hospitals, towns and villages.”
The army regularly carries out operations in Jenin that it describes as “anti-terrorist”, intended according to it to prevent anti-Israeli attacks in Israel or the West Bank.
The violence in this occupied territory was exacerbated by the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, triggered by a bloody attack by the Islamist movement on Israeli territory on October 7.
At least 517 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Since the same date, at least 12 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank in Palestinian attacks or attacks, according to official Israeli data.