A unit of undercover Israeli special forces has fatally shot three young Palestinians inside a hospital in the northern West Bank, in an unusual event since the beginning of the latest round of violence in the occupied territory.
Palestinian media outlets reported that members of the hit squad were dressed as doctors, nurses, and even civilians. They went into the Ibn Sina Hospital in the west of Jenin at 5:30 a.m. local time (0330 GMT) on Tuesday.
They went up to the third floor of the hospital and shot three young Palestinians dead with guns equipped with silencers before escaping the building.
One of the slain Palestinians was undergoing treatment in the hospital for some three months since he was injured by the Israeli army.
There was no apparent attempt to arrest the Israeli assailants.
The Israeli military later claimed that the three assailants were members of a team affiliated to the Hamas resistance movement planning to carry out attacks against the regime.
It alleged that one of the men, identified as 27-year-old Muhammad Jalamneh, was in contact with Hamas headquarters abroad, armed other Palestinian fighters for a shooting attack, and was previously injured while advancing a car bomb attack.
Some Hebrew-language media reports even claimed that Jalamneh was also a spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, in the Jenin refugee camp.
The Israeli military named the other two as brothers Muhammad and Basel Ghazawi.
Muhammad is said to be a member of the Jenin Battalion and was involved in attacks including shooting at Israeli troops, while Basel is said to be a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement.
‘Israeli military carrying out massacre inside hospitals’
The Palestinian health ministry reacted to the incident, stating that Israel is guilty of “dozens of crimes… against treatment centers and staff” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The ministry said that the Israeli military was “committing a new massacre inside hospitals.”
“The Minister of Health [Mai al-Kaila] urgently called on the United Nations, international institutions and human rights organizations to put an end to the series of daily crimes committed by the occupation against our people and health centers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” it noted.
Israel has ramped up its aggression in the West Bank since its genocidal war on Gaza began in early October.
Nearly 350 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since October 7, when Israel waged the war on Gaza after Hamas carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Israeli aggression has so far killed at least 26,637 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 65,387 others in Gaza. The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
