A Palestinian teenager was shot and killed in an Israeli military raid in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority said, with the army claiming to have shot a ‘suspect’ who approached ‘with explosives “.
Mahmoud Majid Mohammed al-Aïdi, 17, died of his wounds “due to the firing of occupation bullets (Israel, editor’s note) in the head”, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Al-Fara, northeast of the city of Nablus, the Palestinian Ministry of Health wrote in a statement.
The Israeli army, for its part, said it shot a suspect during “an anti-terrorist operation”, carried out alongside several other night operations in the West Bank, during which it says it arrested 23 people.
“During an operation at Al-Fara camp, a Palestinian suspect approached the soldiers with explosives. The soldiers responded by firing live ammunition” and hitting one person, an army statement added.
Assem Mansour, one of the refugee camp officials, told AFP that “the Israeli army entered the camp through different entrances after midnight and surrounded a house to search for a suspect”.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The Israeli army has stepped up operations in the areas of Jenin and Nablus, strongholds of armed Palestinian factions, in the northern West Bank, since a wave of anti-Israeli attacks in March and April 2022 .
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 48 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians, including minors), nine civilians (including three minors) and an Israeli policeman and a Ukrainian, according to an AFP count made from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
The Palestinian Health Ministry also announced on Tuesday the death of a 25-year-old Palestinian, Haroun Rasmi Youssouf Abu Aram, who he said died of wounds caused by Israeli bullets two years earlier in the southern West Bank.