First modification:
The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed that two 22-year-olds were killed by Israeli gunfire in this refugee camp, located in the occupied West Bank. According to Israel, the deceased were allegedly involved in a recent attack on a Jewish settlement, which ended with one person being injured. So far this year, 104 Palestinians, including minors, have been killed by Israeli fire.
The occupied West Bank is once again the scene of a fateful raid by the Israeli army.
Members of the Israeli forces entered this May 6 in the Nur Shams refugee camp (near the city of Tulkarem) to, as the military institution assured, arrest suspects of having perpetrated an armed attack against Israeli citizens on May 2.
However, during the operation there were no detainees. Two young men around the age of 22 died and a third was injured “after trying to flee the scene”, in the words of the Hebrew Army.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the facts and identified the deceased as Samer Salah al Shafei, who was shot in the neck, chest and abdomen; and Hamza Jamil Jareoush, who suffered bullet wounds to the chest, abdomen and left foot.
From the occupied Palestinian Territories, the deceased were designated as “martyrs” – as Palestinians usually refer to their deceased -, while the military affirmed that they were aggressors of civilians.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – the armed wing of the Fatah political movement, which partially controls the occupied West Bank – stated that the men belonged to that group, considered terrorist by Israel. “The two Palestinians were executed in cold blood by the occupation forces,” the official Palestinian news agency ‘Wafa’ said.
Videos that circulated on social networks showed what would be the lifeless bodies of the two young people, lying on a tin roof, while the Israeli forces searched them. The soldiers did not leave the scene until they were sure that the two suspects were dead, Palestinian media reported, based on witnesses.
After these deaths, The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops so far in 2023 rises to 104in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In all, more than 120 people, including Israelis and foreigners, have lost their lives. in the same period of time.
As is common, Palestinian militants warned of reprisals
After verifying that the two young men who lost their lives were part of their ranks, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade they promised retaliation against Israel. “Our response to his murder will be as great as our pain,” the militia warned, calling the two men “heroes of the resistance.”
Likewise, the Hamas group, which controls the Gaza Strip and has a significant presence in the occupied West Bank, noted that the recent deaths “will only increase the determination of the Palestinian people to advance on the path of resistance.”
Israel has been carrying out violent raids – mostly at night – on villages, towns and cities in the West Bank for more than a year, in an operation prompted after the Palestinian attacks in early 2022.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the most far-right in Israeli history, maintains that these raids are aimed at dismantling militant networks and thwarting future attacks against its citizens.
However, the Palestinians suffer from this type of military action, and see in it a further entrenchment of the decades-long occupation by Israel on land that the Palestinians claim as their own, and as part of an eventual and future independent state.
With Reuters, AP and EFE
#Israeli #soldiers #kill #Palestinian #youths #armed #raid #Nur #Shams