Five Palestinians, including a fighter, were killed and more than 90 injured on Monday in an Israeli military raid in Jenin that sparked intense clashes in the occupied northern West Bank city where missiles were fired from an Israeli helicopter .
Seven members of the Israeli security forces were injured and hospitalized during the incursion into the city’s refugee camp. Israeli troops, who entered around 4:00 a.m. local time (01:00 GMT), according to local authorities, withdrew around 3:00 p.m. after very heavy fighting, according to AFP journalists on the spot.
After the troops left, residents poured into the streets for the funerals of the slain Palestinians: a 15-year-old boy and four men aged 19 to 29, according to the Palestinian health ministry. One of them, Qassam Abu Saria, was an Islamic Jihad fighter, the armed group said in a statement.
Health Minister Mai al-Kaila called for the “urgent” dispatch of medical supplies, medicines and blood bags to Jenin, where 91 people were injured, 23 of them seriously, according to a statement.
Accustomed to the field, an AFP photographer described clashes of rare intensity, in which a Palestinian journalist was injured, and said he saw a helicopter fire two missiles, which had not happened for years .
The Israeli army said it entered Jenin to arrest “suspects” belonging to Islamic Jihad and the Islamist movement Hamas.
A military helicopter “opened fire on armed men to help extract soldiers”, against a backdrop of “very intense exchange of fire”, said a press release.
According to a source within Palestinian intelligence, this is the first time that a helicopter has used missiles on Jenin since the end of the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising, 2000-2005).
In the early afternoon, as the fighting raged, Khaled Ahmad, a Palestinian Red Crescent doctor stationed near an ambulance at Avicenna Hospital, described the situation as a “real war” inside the camp .
After the departure of Israeli troops, residents show two gaping holes where they say two Israeli military vehicles were hit by explosives.
Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said an armored personnel carrier was damaged by a “very unusual” explosive device.
The army said it left the camp recovering all its vehicles.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant promised to use “all available means to strike terrorist elements where they are”.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said he was “extremely concerned” and denounced, in a speech, an increase in the “excessive use of force” by Israeli forces in West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The General Secretariat of the Arab League condemned “the crimes committed by the occupying army, including the bombardment of civilian populations”.
“Extremely concerned by the latest events in Jenin resulting in numerous civilian casualties,” the European Union said in a statement that “military operations [must] be proportionate and in accordance with international humanitarian law.”
These “incessant massacres” are “attempts to blow up the region and drag it into a spiral of violence”, reacted Nabil Abou Roudeina, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli raid took place while Barbara Leaf, US Undersecretary of State for the Middle East, was in Ramallah for talks with Palestinian officials.
A stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, the northern West Bank is the scene of often deadly clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli forces who carry out frequent incursions there.
Besieged by the Israeli army in 2002, the Jenin camp was devastated in fighting in which 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed.
The camp of 23,000 inhabitants is located in a Palestinian area known as autonomous under the Israeli-Palestinian agreements of Oslo (1993).
Since the beginning of the year, at least 164 Palestinians, 21 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources .
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.
06/19/2023 17:52:09 – Jenin (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP