At least two young Palestinian men have been killed and several others injured after Israeli military forces carried out a large-scale incursion into a refugee camp in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, medical sources say.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said violent clashes broke out early on Sunday after Israeli soldiers stormed Nur Shams camp, located three kilometers east of Tulkarm.
Health officials said 21-year-old Usaid Farhan Abu Ali Jabaawi and Abdulrahman Suleiman Abu Daghash, 32, were rushed to Martyr Dr. Thabet Thabet Government Hospital in Tulkarm with bullets in their heads.
They were pronounced dead shortly after arrival at the medical center, they said.
According to the report, the Israeli forces besieged the camp from all directions and fired live ammunition, stun grenades, and toxic gas.
Palestinian resistance fighters, in return, fired shots at the troops, detonated homemade bombs, and placed explosive devices in several roads and alleys to slow down the movement of armored Israeli vehicles, it added.
The report quoted witnesses as saying that Israeli troops fired several short-range Energa anti-tank rifle grenades at the camp square, seriously damaging it.
Israeli snipers were also deployed on rooftops, and bulldozers accompanying the forces tried to remove barriers set up at entrances to the camp, the report said.
Resistance fighters detonated a powerful explosive device close to one of the Israeli bulldozers, setting it ablaze, it added, saying according to eyewitnesses’ accounts an Israeli soldier inside the bulldozer was injured as a result.
The development came a day after a Palestinian teenager, Abdullah Emad Abu al-Hasan, 18, was shot and killed s during an assault on the village of Kafr Dan northwest of Jenin.
Israeli forces launch raids on various cities of the West Bank almost on a daily basis under the pretext of detaining what the regime calls “wanted” Palestinians. The raids usually lead to violent confrontations with residents.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this year in the occupied Palestinian territories and Gaza. The majority of these fatalities have been recorded in the West Bank.
Those figures indicate that 2023 is already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations began keeping track of fatalities in 2005.
Previously, 2022 had been the deadliest year with 150 Palestinians killed, of whom 33 were minors, according to the United Nations.
