(Tulkarem) In the streets of Nour Shams, the whistling of bullets gave way to screams and sobs. Still in shock from a deadly raid by the Israeli army, families buried their loved ones on Sunday in this camp near Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank.
The dust has barely settled when, in the middle of the streets bearing the scars of the Israeli operation, the funeral procession passes. Grieving families bury thirteen men and teenagers killed by the army during this raid which began Thursday evening and ended Saturday evening.
Israeli forces regularly carry out military operations on locations in the occupied West Bank, and the number of these raids has increased since October 7.
A total of 14 people were killed in two days, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The Israeli army said on Saturday that it had killed ten people in an “anti-terrorist” raid on this camp in the north of the Palestinian territory.
PHOTO RANEEN SAWAFTA, REUTERS
Ambulances arrive at Nour Shams camp in the occupied West Bank
But the inhabitants of Nour Shams tell a very different story.
Niaz Zandeq’s son, Jihad, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier on his fifteenth birthday, says the 40-year-old Palestinian. Neighbors said he came out of his house with his hands in the air when he was killed by a soldier.
They showed AFP photos of his body lying in the street, a gunshot wound to his forehead.
“They opened fire and hit him in the head when he came out,” adds Mr. Zandeq, in tears. “He was not armed.”
Asked by AFP, the Israeli army was not able to respond immediately.
Another teenager was killed during these deadly 48 hours. 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.
The teenager’s father, a rescuer, learned the terrible news when Qais’ body was taken to the hospital where he worked, the organization said in a publication on X.
“A little Gaza”
The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had arrested eight people and seized weapons in the camp, and that eight soldiers and a police officer had been injured.
In the streets of the camp, AFP journalists noted the presence of armed men who fired into the air during the funerals.
“Anyone who fights back in the camp is considered a terrorist,” Ibrahim Ghanim, a 20-year-old law student attending the funeral, told AFP.
“Israeli soldiers have killed so many people here over the years that I have lost count,” he sighs, disillusioned.
On the sidelines of the procession, some were already busy clearing the rubble around the houses, while others still seemed in a state of shock.
PHOTO RANEEN SAWAFTA, REUTERS
Men carry body of Palestinian killed in Israeli army raid on Nour Shams camp
At 85, Hamdia Abdallah Sarhan had “never seen so much violence”. Soldiers burst into her home and fired into the wall to try to open a firing position: she remained lying on the ground, “terrified,” she said.
Mme Sarhan has health problems and has to use an oxygen machine to help him breathe. When the soldiers arrived, they broke the machine, and she was only saved by neighbors who urgently found a machine while she was struggling to breathe, she added.
Nine-year-old Misk el-Sheikh was upstairs in her home when Israeli bulldozers demolished the facade of her house Thursday evening. “I was very scared,” she confided, “I wanted my dad to hold me.”
“The Israeli army’s operation targeted the daily lives of civilians,” argues his father, Moustafa el-Sheikh. “They transformed Nour Shams into a little Gaza.”
The Nour-Shams raid comes against a backdrop of intensifying violence in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the Hamas attack on 7 October on Israeli soil.
At least 484 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.