Three Palestinians were killed on the night of Sunday May 21 to Monday May 22, in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank. According to Palestinian sources, they were killed during a new raid by the Israeli army. In a statement, the Palestinian Health Ministry identified the three fighters as Muhammad Abu Zaytoun (32), Fathi Abu Rizk (30) and Abdullah Abu Hamdan (24). Asked by AFP, the Israeli army did not react.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, said in a statement that they were "fighters" of the group.
The West Bank, Palestinian territory, has been occupied since 1967 by Israel. Nearly three million Palestinians live there, as do around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered by the UN to be illegal under international law.
These new deaths come against a backdrop of an outbreak of violence since the beginning of the year. On Monday evening, an Israeli soldier was lightly injured in a car-ramming attack in Huwara, West Bank, according to the army, which said the vehicle had fled.
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.
