JERUSALEM: Israeli force Thursday killed nine Palestinians including an elderly woman and wounded several others during a raid on the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian officials accused the Israeli forces of using tear gas inside a hospital children’s ward and even preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded.
Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila charged that occupation forces stormed Jenin Government Hospital and intentionally fired tear gas canisters at the paediatric department in the hospital, according to AFP.
Kaila described the situation in the refugee camp as “critical” and said Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded.
Israel’s army declined to comment when asked by AFP about the health minister’s tear gas allegation.
The military has said only that its “forces are operating in Jenin”. Thursday’s fatalities bring the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank so far this year to 29, including fighters and civilians, most of whom were shot by Israeli forces, as per AFP.
Jenin deputy governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told AFP that residents were living in a “real state of war”. “The Israeli army is destroying everything and shooting at everything that moves,” he told AFP.
Talking about the issue, Wissam Baker, head of Jenin public hospital, told Al Jazeera “There is an invasion that is unprecedented in the past period, in terms of how large it is and the number of injuries,”
“The ambulance driver tried to get to one of the martyrs who was on the floor, but the Israeli forces shot directly at the ambulance and prevented them from approaching him,” Baker continued.
‘International silence’
At least 26 Israelis and 200 Palestinians were killed across Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2022, the majority in the West Bank, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. The Palestinian presidency said Thursday’s raid on Jenin was happening “under international silence”.
“This is what encourages the occupation government to commit massacres against our people in full view of the world,” Nabil Abu Rudeinah, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told AFP.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have escalated since the former launched the raids last spring, following a spate of Palestinian attacks that killed 19 people. While 30 more lost their lives in another round of attacks later in the year.
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