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22-05-2024
EST BANK: Dozens of more Palestinians, including a doctor, have been killed by Israeli forces during an operation in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry has said.
Dr Aseed Jabareen, a 50-year-old surgeon at Jenin Government Hospital, was shot dead on his way to work, according to the ministry.
Palestinian media also said a teenage boy was killed while riding a bicycle.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the reports. Earlier, it announced that it had begun a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin and that gunmen had been shot.
There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October.
The UN says at least 480 Palestinians members of armed groups, attackers and civilians have been killed in conflict-related incidents in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Ten Israelis, including six security forces personnel, have also been killed in the West Bank.
The West Bank-based Palestinian health ministry said seven people had been killed and nine wounded, two of them seriously, by Israeli fire during Tuesday morning’s operation in Jenin.
The only casualty it named was Dr Jabareen, whom it said Israeli forces had shot as he travelled to work at Jenin Government Hospital, where he was a surgeon.
The ministry accused Israeli forces of intentionally killing the doctor.
Official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that a schoolboy in the 9th grade, Mahmoud Hamadna, was killed as he cycled through Jenin.
It posted a photograph on X, purportedly showing the teenager’s body lying on the ground in a side-street beside what looked like a bicycle.
Wafa also said schoolteacher Allam Jaradat was killed “while on duty” at Walid Abu Muwais Basic School and posted a photo that it said showed a pool of blood on the back seat of his car.
Video footage meanwhile showed people helping a Palestinian photojournalist, Amr Mansara, who was reportedly injured by shrapnel from a bullet while covering the operation.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement; “Israeli security forces are currently conducting a counterterrorism operation in the area of Jenin. Hits to gunmen in the area were identified.”
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) which is proscribed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the UK and other countries, said its operatives were battling Israeli forces in Jenin and had targeted some with an explosive device.
On Friday night, the IDF said it had carried out a rare air strike in West Bank and killed a key figure in one of Jenin’s armed groups.
The IDF said Islam Khamayseh was a “senior terrorist operative” who had been involved in a series of attacks, including a 2023 drive-by shooting that killed an Israeli man near the settlement of Hermesh.
PIJ said Khamayseh was one of its members and that his killing would “not go unpunished”.
The US state department has found five units of the Israeli military responsible for gross violations of human rights in individual incidents, but says they will continue to receive US military backing.
All the incidents involved took place outside of Gaza before the current war.
Israel took corrective action in four units, giving “additional information” on the fifth, the department says. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
