Nine Palestinians were killed Thursday in Jenin during an Israeli raid presented by the army as an operation against Islamist activists in the refugee camp of this city in the north of the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority accused the soldiers of firing tear gas inside a hospital’s pediatric ward, which the army denied.
A total of nine people, including “an elderly woman”, were killed and 20 injured, four of them seriously, during this military incursion, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The United Nations has not recorded such a high toll in a single Israeli operation in the West Bank since it began counting the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2005.
An Israeli military spokesman said the army had carried out a “counter-terrorism operation” in the camp targeting the armed organization Islamic Jihad, which has been involved in numerous anti-Israeli attacks.
Before withdrawing, Israeli forces “deliberately fired tear gas canisters” into the pediatric ward of the Jenin Government Hospital, “causing some children to asphyxiate”, Palestinian Health Minister May al-Kaila.
“No one fired tear gas voluntarily in a hospital […] but the operation was taking place not far from the hospital and it is possible that tear gas entered through an open window,” an Israeli military spokesman told AFP.
The Israeli army had previously reported shooting at several “terrorists” as gunfire was exchanged in the camp.
No soldiers were injured, she added.
“The resistance is everywhere and is ready for the next confrontation in case the fascist government (Israeli, editor’s note) and its criminal army continue to attack our people, our land and our sacred places”, commented Tariq Salmi, spokesperson Islamic Jihad, in a statement.
Several thousand people gathered in the early afternoon in Jenin for the funeral of the nine Palestinians, whose remains were wrapped in the Palestinian flag, AFP journalists noted.
“Massacre”
At the end of the morning, rescuers were busy in the rubble in the refugee camp, where the walls of some buildings were blackened by fires, noted an AFP photographer.
The camp, dating from 1953, is a city within a city and is home to nearly 20,000 refugees, according to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.
In May 2021, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, star of Al Jazeera, was killed there while covering an Israeli raid.
The Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, carries out almost daily raids through this Palestinian territory, particularly in the areas of Jenin and Nablus, strongholds of armed Palestinian factions.
“The Israeli army destroys everything and shoots everything that moves,” Jenin deputy governor Kamal Abu al-Roub told AFP.
The Palestinian Minister of Health called for the organization of an “emergency meeting” with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization. Asked by AFP, these organizations did not comment.
“I am deeply concerned and saddened by the continuing cycle of violence in the occupied West Bank,” UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said in a statement.
Nabil Abou Roudeina, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, denounced “a massacre perpetrated by the Israeli occupation government”.
“The occupation will pay the price for the massacre it has perpetrated” and “the response of the resistance will not be long in coming”, promised in a press release Saleh al-Arouri, senior official of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant must each carry out a “security assessment”, according to their offices.
Thursday’s deaths bring to 29 the number of Palestinians, civilians or members of armed groups, killed since the beginning of the year in violence with Israeli forces or civilians.