At least three Palestinians have been killed and dozens of others injured as Israel launched a large army raid, backed by drone strikes, on occupied West Bank’s Jenin within the early hours on Monday.
The sounds of gunfire and explosives may very well be heard throughout the town hours after the strike and drones have been clearly audible overhead, the Jenin Brigades, an armed group based mostly within the metropolis’s massive refugee camp, stated it was participating the Israeli forces.
At least six drones may very well be seen circling over the town and the adjoining camp, a densely packed space that homes round 14,000 individuals in lower than half a sq. kilometer.
“What is going on in the refugee camp is real war,” stated Palestinian ambulance driver, Khaled Alahmad. “There were strikes from the sky targeting the camp, every time we drive in around five to seven ambulances and we come back full with injured people.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed not less than three individuals had been killed and 27 wounded in Jenin, whereas one other man was killed within the metropolis of Ramallah after being shot within the head at a checkpoint.
The Israeli army claimed its forces focused a constructing that served as a command middle for the Jenin Brigades within the West Bank.
Until final month, when it carried out a strike on June 21 close to Jenin, the Israeli army had not used drone strikes within the West Bank since 2006.
The obvious scale of Monday’s raid, involving a pressure described as “brigade-size” – suggesting round 1,000-2,000 troops – underlined Jenin’s place in Israel’s latest technique to curb armed teams together with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.
But the rising violence may set off a wider response from the Palestinians, drawing in teams within the Gaza Strip, the coastal enclave managed by Hamas.
“The resistance will confront the enemy and defend the Palestinian people and all options are open to strike the enemy and respond to its aggression on Jenin,” stated a press release from the Islamic Jihad group in Gaza.
Protests flare in Jenin
As daylight broke on Monday in Jenin, thick black smoke from burning tires set alight by protesters, residents swirled by means of the streets whereas calls to assist the demonstrators rang out from loudspeakers in mosques.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas known as the operation “a new war crime against our defenseless people.”
The Israeli army alleged the focused constructing functioned as an “advanced observation and reconnaissance center,” in addition to a coordination and communications hub for the armed teams.
It offered an aerial {photograph} exhibiting what it stated was the goal and which indicated the constructing hit was close to two colleges and a medical middle.
Only days earlier than final month’s drone strike, the military used helicopter gunships throughout a raid that killed 5 Palestinians.
The escalating violence within the West Bank over the previous 15 months has induced mounting worldwide alarm, with common military raids in cities like Jenin, a sequence of lethal assaults by Palestinians in opposition to Israelis, and rampages by Jewish settler mobs in opposition to Palestinian villages.
Israel captured the West Bank, which the Palestinians see because the core of a future impartial state, together with East Jerusalem and Gaza, within the 1967 Middle Eastern warfare. Following many years of battle, peace talks that had been brokered by the United States have been frozen since 2014.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
