NABLUS: The Israeli military said it shot and killed three alleged Palestinian gunmen in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the latest bloodshed in one of the most violent stretches of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in years.
Israeli security forces said they opened fire at Palestinian militants who had shot at them from a car in the West Bank city of Nablus, the territory’s commercial capital and a major focus of the Israeli military’s recently stepped-up raids. In the hilly neighborhood of al-Tur shortly after the shooting, Israeli forces inspected a shattered black Skoda surrounded by spent bullet casings.
Palestinian media described the Israeli killing of the gunmen as an ambush following the militants’ attempted attack on Israeli forces near a Jewish settlement overlooking Nablus. The Israeli military said it confiscated three M-16 rifles and other equipment from their car.
Israeli-Palestinian fighting has surged in the territory, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek the occupied West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, for a hoped-for future state.
In recent months, the West Bank has witnessed a volatile mix of the rise of local armed Palestinian groups carrying out frequent shooting attacks against Israelis and near-daily Israeli military raids that have increasingly turned deadly. Earlier this month, Israel’s most forceful incursion into the West Bank in nearly two decades killed 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier.
Heightening tensions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right, ultranationalist coalition has rejected talks with the Palestinian leadership, sought to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and pushed for a more aggressive response to Palestinian militant attacks.
Late Monday, Palestinian militants said they opened fire at a bus carrying Israeli settlers near the Palestinian town of Hawara, just south of Nablus, without causing casualties. The Israeli military said it was setting up checkpoints to search for the suspects. A little-known armed group from the area calling itself the “Dawn Brigade” claimed responsibility for the shooting.
So far this year, over 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank – the highest death toll in over a decade. Nearly half of them were affiliated with militant groups and killed in fighting during Israeli military raids, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions as well as innocent bystanders have also been killed.
Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 25 people this year.
Israeli military kills 3 alleged Palestinian gunmen in volatile West Bank
https://arab.news/mbf4h
Israeli military kills 3 alleged Palestinian gunmen in volatile West Bank
- Violence in the West Bank has surged for over a year, with increased Israeli raids
- Israeli security forces said they opened fire at Palestinian militants who had shot at them from a car in the West Bank
Independent UN body condemns ‘vicious attacks’ on UN expert on Palestinian rights
- The UN Coordination Committee accused European ministers of relying on “manufactured facts“
- UN experts are commissioned to monitor and document specific human rights crises
GENEVA: An independent United Nations body on Tuesday condemned what it described as vicious attacks based on disinformation by several European ministers against the organization’s special rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese.
In the past week several European countries, including Germany, France and Italy, called for Albanese’s resignation over her alleged criticism of Israel. Albanese, an Italian lawyer, denies making the remarks.
On Friday, the Czech Republic’s Foreign Minister Petr Macinka quoted Albanese on X as having called Israel a “common enemy of humanity,” and he also called for her resignation.
A transcript of Albanese’s remarks made in Doha on February 7 seen by Reuters did not characterise Israel in this way, although she has consistently criticized the country in the past over the Gaza conflict.
The UN Coordination Committee — a body of six independent experts which coordinates and facilitates the work of Special Rapporteurs — accused European ministers of relying on “manufactured facts.”
“Instead of demanding Ms Albanese’s resignation for performing her mandate...these government representatives should join forces to hold accountable, including before the International Criminal Court, leaders and officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza,” the Committee said.
It said the pressure exerted on Albanese was part of an increasing trend of politically motivated and malicious attacks against independent human rights experts, UN officials and judges of international courts.
US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Albanese after she wrote letters to US companies accusing them of contributing to gross human rights violations by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.
UN experts are commissioned by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to monitor and document specific human rights crises but are independent of the organization itself.
There is no precedent for removing a special rapporteur during their term, although diplomats said that states on the 47-member council could in theory propose a motion to do so.
However, they said strong support for Palestinian rights within the body means that such a motion was unlikely to pass.
