Israel kills 11 Palestinians in two-day raid on Jenin

Jenin, Palestinian Territories – AFP

Israeli forces carried out raids in the West Bank city of Jenin for a second day Wednesday, killing at least 11 Palestinians, an AFP correspondent reported.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 11 people including four children, and wounded 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.

An AFP correspondent on Tuesday saw four bodies at Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman government hospital morgue.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from the government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday.

A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.

The Israeli army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.

Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, medics and military officials said at the time.

Streets near the entrance to the Jenin camp were deserted on Wednesday afternoon, with drones buzzing overhead.

On the outskirts of the town, Israeli armoured vehicles were parked near a roundabout, while agricultural workers toiled on a farm across the road.

– Bastion of armed groups –

Hamas called the raid a “massacre” and deemed it “conclusive evidence of the criminal mentality that rules the occupying state and its ideological belief in killing our people”.

The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned the raid, saying in a statement on Wafa that Israel was “killing innocent people, doctors, and destroying the infrastructure of Palestinian hospitals, cities and villages”.

The Israeli army routinely carries out raids into Jenin and adjacent camp.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially so since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October last year.

At least 517 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the local health ministry.