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Israeli jets strike Tulkarem (West Bank), killing 18
The attack, which hit a café in a refugee camp, was aimed at a senior Hamas official. According to the Palestinian WAFA news agency, children and the elderly were also killed. Israel is using again its fighter jets in the Territories for the first time since the Second Intifada.
Jerusalem (AsiaNews) – A red thread of war and blood runs from Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, reaching across the region. Israel's war against Hamas and Hezbollah has not spared the occupied territories where for months, amid the silence and the indifference of the international community, violence is spreading and the dead are piling up.
For the past few months, Israeli has conducted repeated aerial strikes in the occupied West Bank. The latest, last night, was in the Tulkarem refugee camp, and involved the first raid by Israeli fighter jets, something not seen in the West Bank since the Second Intifada, more than 20 years ago with the Palestinian Health Ministry reporting at least 18 dead.
A source within the Palestinian security services told AFP that this was the deadliest single attack in the occupied West Bank since 2000. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad condemned the “massacre” as a “dangerous escalation”.
The Israeli military justified yesterday’s operation by its F-16s at the refugee camp in collaboration with the Shin Bet (Israel’s intelligence agency), saying that it targeted and killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi. It noted that “multiple other significant terrorists" were killed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strike killed the local head of the Hamas network, who it said had attempted a car bombing last month and supplied weapons.
Palestinian news agency Wafa said the Israeli airstrike hit a café in the Tulkarem refugee camp, where civilians had gathered. According to a local official cited by the agency, the bombs also killed children and elderly people from several local families.
The official spokesman for the Palestinian presidency condemned the attack, Wafa reported, adding that those attacks "will not bring security and stability to anyone, but will drag the region into more violence".
The Palestinian government also issued a statement, calling “for urgent international action to stop the escalating massacres" against its people..
Tulkarem, which is located in the northern West Bank, not far from the Green Line, halfway between Nablus and the coastal city of Netanya, is one of the Palestinian towns and refugee camps where the protest against the Israeli presence in the Territories exploded in recent months.
The Israeli military already targeted the city in a massive operation in August. Last month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said Israeli raids in the West Bank were taking place “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades.”
Since the start of Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas, in response to the terror attack of 7 October 2023, violence has escalated in the West Bank, with an increase in settler assaults and repeated ground operations, drones and now fighter jets.
Added to this are increasing military restrictions, with thousands of Palestinians arrested and repeated shootouts between Israeli security forces and Palestinian fighters.
According to some estimates, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since 7 October, while at least 24 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian attackers in the same period.
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15/01/2009
