two Palestinians dead and one more injured by Israeli fire this Wednesday Official sources reported during a military raid in the north of the occupied West Bank, after a day-long Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip that left 15 people dead in the enclave. “Two young men, Ahmed Jamal Tawfiq Asaf (19) and Rani Walid Ahmed Qatanat (24), were shot dead by the Israeli occupation in Qabatiya,” the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in the north of the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said that another Palestinian was injured in the operation that took place in the Jenin region, which is the stronghold of the Palestinian militias and the focal point of Israel’s large-scale military operations recently.
An Israeli Army spokesperson confirmed this morning’s raid, calling it “men with guns”. shot He opened fire on the soldiers from a vehicle, killing two people who responded.” He added that an M-16 rifle and a pistol were seized in the operation. many houses were raided and attacked a vehicle by shooting bullets,” he said.
These events take place 24 hours after the Israeli Army launched its ‘Shield and Arrow’ operation, which consisted of a series of attacks. Bomb attacks that killed a total of 15 people in the Gaza Strip -four children and four women- and at least 20 injured. Among the dead are Celil Bahitini, Tarik Az Aldin and Jahed Ahnam, the top commanders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (YIP), which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union and whose purpose is “selective assassination”. .
The Joint Military Operations Room, which brings together Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, including JIP and the Islamist movement Hamas, warned that Israel will “pay the price for its aggression”. possible armed intervention which has not yet happened. Israel is therefore in a state of emergency and is preparing for “the possibility of a long escalation on multiple fronts,” according to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who has given the green light to enlist hundreds of reservists and authorized the evacuation. From about 200 Israeli families around Gaza.
Ron Bar, Director of the Homeland Security Service, Shin Bet assured that Tariq Az Aldin, one of the YIP leaders who died in the bombings in Gaza yesterday, “wants to multiply their terrorist capabilities” in the occupied West Bank through 20 terrorist cells whose purpose is to kill Israelis. “. In fact, he assured that militants were also present in Ramallah, in the central West Bank, commenting that a new cell of the YIP that began producing rocket launchers had recently been liquidated in Jenin and that this “set a very dangerous precedent”. It had the resources to acquire weapons, including drones, to launch attacks against the Israelis. Reiterating that the YIP is financed by Israel’s main enemy, Iran, Bar said, “We will not wait for these terrorist attacks to happen, we will do everything we can to prevent them.”
Yesterday’s bombings in Gaza are Israel’s response to the launch of more than 100 rockets from the enclave a week ago, allegedly orchestrated by Jalil Bahitini.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is experiencing its bloodiest year since the Second Intifada (2000-2005), in the occupied West Bank and Israeli territories, in 2023, 110 Palestinians were killed, most of whom were militants in violent clashes with Israeli troops, as well as 20 civilians, including minors. On the Israeli side, 19 victims of the Palestinian attacks, most of them settlers and among them three children, were killed. In addition, 16 Palestinians were killed, 15 of them yesterday, in the Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.