RAMALLAH: Israeli troops killed 11 Palestinians on Wednesday in an hourslong raid on the occupied West Bank city of Nablus that also left more than 100 people with gunshot wounds, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The Israeli army said the raid targeted militant suspects “in a hideout apartment” who were accused of shootings in the West Bank. Three of the suspects — two from the Lion’s Den militant group and one from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad — were killed, it added.
The operation sparked anger among Palestinians who announced a comprehensive protest strike to be held in Bethlehem on Thursday.
In Ramallah on Wednesday, Palestinians held marches to condemn the crimes of Israeli occupation forces, while shops closed as people mourned the dead.
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Arab News that the killings, which included a young boy and an elderly citizen, were evidence that the occupation government was “operating out of its understanding with the American side.”
“The Palestinian Authority is just a cover for its crimes,” he said.
Barghouti urged the PA to cut off all forms of security contact and coordination with Israel, “which only knows the language of force in dealing with the Palestinian people.”
Taysir Nasrallah, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Nablus, told Arab News: “This criminal occupation targets Palestinian civilians without hesitation and justification.”
The deaths in Nablus took the number of Palestinians killed this year to 61, the Health Ministry said.
Palestinian presidency spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh blamed the Israeli government for the escalation in violence.
“The crime committed by the occupation forces in the city of Nablus today reaffirms the importance of our demand that the international community move immediately to stop the Israeli crimes against our people, their land and their sanctities, and to stop the unilateral Israeli measures,” he said.
He urged the US government to take immediate action and put effective pressure on Israel to end its crimes and aggression against Palestinians.
President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement said: “The ongoing aggression against our people in Nablus and the entire Palestinian land confirms that the occupation government is continuing to exacerbate the situation through its bloody terrorism, which is practiced by the occupation army and settler militias, targeting civilians, children, the elderly, medical staff and the press.”
Hussein Al-Sheikh of the Palestine Liberation Organization said the “barbaric, planned and premeditated criminal act that the occupation committed today in Nablus is a massacre demonstrating its criminal nature.”
The Palestinian leadership was considering taking steps at all levels in response to this “barbaric act,” he added.
The PIJ said: “We affirm that the blood of the martyrs of Nablus will not be in vain and that the occupation’s objectives behind this aggression will fail. The resistance continues, the fighting continues and the enemy must wait for the resistance’s response at any moment and from anywhere.”
The group’s armed faction in Gaza, Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was watching “the enemy’s escalating crimes against our people in the occupied West Bank” and warned that its patience was running out.
Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres called for an end to Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian lands.
“Each new settlement is another roadblock on the path to peace,” he said. “All settlement activity is illegal under international law. It must stop.”
He added that “incitement to violence is a dead end. Nothing justifies terrorism.”