(Tulkarem) Four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army operation launched overnight from Wednesday to Thursday in a refugee camp adjoining Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, the army and Palestinian sources said.
The Israeli army announced shortly after midnight (6 p.m. Eastern time) that it was carrying out an operation in the Nour-Shams camp, located in the northwest of the West Bank.
“During the operation, soldiers arrested three wanted people and discovered explosives hidden under the road with the aim of injuring Israeli forces,” an army spokesperson reported at midday on Thursday. .
“A plane attacked two terrorists who had thrown explosives at our troops and eliminated them,” he added. Soldiers then “exchanged fire with terrorists, eliminated two of them and found M4-type rifles on them,” he said.
Earlier, the Palestinian Red Crescent had written, in a message published on killed by Israeli occupying forces.”
The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health also confirmed this report.
AFP journalists on site noted at 4 a.m. (Eastern time) that the Israeli army was no longer in the camp.
Relatives of the four dead gathered Thursday in the morgue of Tulkarem hospital, where the remains wrapped in bloodstained sheets were brought.
“My nephew was a young man from the camp, enthusiastic and optimistic,” Ziad Ali Abou Abeid, 52, the uncle of Nidal Ali Abou Abeid, one of the four Palestinians killed who was a vegetable seller, told AFP .
“He wanted to earn a living, the occupying army killed his ambitions, like those of everyone in the camp,” he added.
On Wednesday, three Palestinians, including a commander of the Islamic Jihad (Palestinian Islamist organization), were killed in an Israeli strike on a car in Jenin, one of the strongholds of the Palestinian armed factions in the north of the West Bank.
Violence has intensified in the West Bank, territory occupied since 1967 by Israel, since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the unprecedented attack by commandos of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel on October 7. .
According to the Palestinian Authority, more than 440 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers since then, and thousands more have been arrested.
At least 17 Israeli soldiers or civilians have died in attacks, according to Israeli authorities.