Israel kills nine Palestinians in West Bank air strikes

Tulkarem, Palestinian Territories – AFP

Israel killed nine Palestinians in separate air strikes in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian press agency Wafa reported.

Five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Tulkarem area, Wafa reported.

According to Wafa, the drone fired two missiles at a vehicle which caught fire, killing five men.

The director of the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarem said in a statement that “five martyrs” had arrived at the facility after “an Israeli drone strike on a Palestinian vehicle close to the village of Zeita”.

A witness at the scene of the strike told AFP: “I live less than 50 metres (yards) from here. We came (after) the sound of an explosion and saw a vehicle on fire” on the road towards Zeita, to the north of Tulkarem.

“Next to it, we saw a body lying on the road. Inside the vehicle, there were three charred bodies, from what we were able to see, completely burnt,” said the witness named Nasser, who declined to have his last name published.

The Israeli military quickly sealed off the area, Wafa reported.

In a second air strike, hours later in the Tulkarem area, Wafa reported that four Palestinians were killed.

The military confirmed the aerial strike, saying “an additional terrorist cell was eliminated” as part of the ongoing counterterrorism activity there.

Alongside Israel’s war on Gaza, violence has intensified in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.

Israeli troops and illegal Jewish settlers have killed at least 603 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.

At least 17 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.

Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank alongside some three million Palestinians.