Israeli troops, backed by two military helicopters, killed five Palestinians, including a teenager, and wounded at least 66 others, five seriously, during a violent clash in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Monday. , as reported by the Israeli Army and local militias and doctors. Seven Israeli soldiers were also injured.
The aim of the army was to arrest two suspects of carrying out attacks, without specifying which ones. What should have been a "routine operation" of arrests ended up becoming an intense clash not foreseen by the army, said its spokesperson, Richard Hecht, explaining that a hundred uniformed officers participated in the operation.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health assured that among the deceased was a child under the age of 15, and among the injured - of which at least 17 had gunshot wounds and five were in serious condition - there was a "girl with a critical head injury ”. It was not immediately known if any of them were affiliated with Palestinian armed groups. The Jenin Battalion, which brings together various militias linked to different Palestinian factions in the refugee camp, confirmed that they responded "to the aggression of the occupation".
The Palestinian authorities called to provide blood and medical supplies to hospitals in Jenin, which are collapsed. Specifically, the Palestinian dead were identified by the authorities as Ahmed Yousef Saqr, 15 years old; Khaled Azam Asasa and Qais Majdi Adel Jabareen, 21; and Qasam Faisal Abu Sariya, 29.
Five Army vehicles were attacked, several with explosions caused by Palestinian detonated devices, and were trapped under fire at the scene, with their crews on board, until the Army managed to evacuate them. Seven Israeli soldiers and paramilitaries suffered minor or moderate injuries. The use of a roadside bomb by militants in the West Bank was "very unusual and dramatic," Hecht said, adding that it could affect future military strategy.
It was the first time that the army had deployed helicopters to open fire from the air against the Palestinians since the Second Intifada (2000-2005), when Israel used them in special circumstances.
Seeing that the Israeli forces were under heavy fire, "we sent a helicopter, not an attack helicopter but a rescue one, but it was attacked by militants, and an attack helicopter was sent to protect it," another Army spokesman explained.
The Palestinian government accused Israel of "open war" against the Palestinian people and said President Mahmud Abbas would take "unprecedented decisions" at an upcoming emergency meeting.
According to the official Palestinian agency Wafa, at least two Palestinians were arrested in the operation, which spread to the city of Jenin, its refugee camp and the nearby village of Burkin, and the uniformed officers sought to arrest, among others, the son of a senior Hamas official in the West Bank, Jamal Abu al Hija, jailed in Israel. Eyewitnesses told Wafa that Israeli soldiers also broke into the home of suspect Musab al-Barmaki in the Jabriyat neighborhood of Jenin, using its residents as a human shield.
Another 12 Palestinians were arrested today in five different raids in various parts of the occupied West Bank, which took place without serious incidents.
Meanwhile, the Red Crescent emergency services denounced that the Israeli forces "attacked two ambulances with bullets", that "an Israeli military vehicle intentionally collided with an ambulance from the front to prevent its arrival", and that the uniformed " prevent ambulances from reaching the victims in Jenin". In addition, Wafa reported that Israeli soldiers attacked a Palestinian journalist from Al-Ghad, Naser Hazem, who was shot in the abdomen.
The incursion took place the same day that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, denounced that the excessive use of force and the murders perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians in the occupied territory of the West Bank have increased and that this seems include extrajudicial killings. "The recent escalation of violence in Gaza, as well as the forced removal of Palestinians through evictions, house demolition, settlement expansion and settler violence, calls for solutions," Türk said in his speech at the opening of the 53rd session of the Council. of Human Rights in Geneva.
The occupied West Bank is experiencing its highest peak of violence since the Second Intifada, with 129 Palestinians killed so far this year, many of them militants but also civilians -including 22 minors-, most of them in armed clashes with Israeli troops, which have intensified their raids in the area, especially in the area of Nablus and Jenin.
