Three Palestinian fighters were killed overnight from Sunday to Monday in a new Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, against the backdrop of an outbreak of violence between Palestinians and Israelis since the beginning of the year.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Mohammad Abu Zaytoun, 32, Fathi Abu Rizk, 30, and Abdallah Abu Hamdan, 24, were shot dead in the Balata Palestinian refugee camp in Nablus, northern the West Bank, and six people were injured, one seriously.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, said in a statement that the three men killed were "combatants" of the group.
At the Balata morgue, an AFP photographer saw three bodies covered with Palestinian flags, two of which had a yellow ribbon on their foreheads with the writing "Fatah", before the start of the funeral.
The Palestinian presidency denounced Monday "a real massacre".
Its spokesman, Nabil Abu Roudeina, described the repeated operations of the Israeli forces in Nablus as "a major war crime and a collective punishment which must be ended immediately", calling on "the American administration to intervene immediately to stop the Israeli madness."
For its part, the Israeli army said it opened fire and "neutralized two assailants" in response to shots that targeted soldiers during an "anti-terrorist" operation carried out in Balata.
In pursuit of several suspects, the soldiers discovered weapons in the area, including three M-16 assault rifles, two of which were in the possession of the fighters, as well as ammunition and military equipment, according to a military statement.
The soldiers also discovered in a house "an explosives manufacturing site containing tens of kilograms of explosives intended to carry out attacks", added the army, specifying to have destroyed the site.
Witnesses told AFP that Israeli forces raided several houses in the camp overnight, saying they heard gunfire and loud explosions. A house was demolished, they added.
The army also announced that it had carried out a raid in Jenin (north) and in other localities across the West Bank.
The army is stepping up operations in the north of the territory, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups.
This new operation follows an outbreak of violence between Palestinians and Israelis since the beginning of the year.
Also in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli soldier was slightly injured Sunday evening in a ramming attack in Huwara, near Nablus, the Israeli army said, adding that the assailant had fled in the vehicle.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 153 Palestinians, 20 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.
Nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967. About 490,000 Israelis also live there in settlements considered by the UN to be illegal under international law.
05/22/2023 11:07:26 - Balata (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
