TEL AVIV, Israel: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in a raid on a militant stronghold in the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, the latest violence in a city that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the current round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
Violence has gripped the region since last spring, when Israel launched near-nightly raids in response to a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks. The violence has escalated into the fiercest fighting in the West Bank in some two decades, and along with increased violence by radical Jewish settlers and settlement expansion by Israel’s far-right government, has fueled tensions in the region.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as Mustafa Al-Kastouni, 32. It was not immediately clear if the man was affiliated with a militant group. The Hamas militant group said its fighters engaged in a gunbattle with Israeli troops in Jenin and lobbed explosives at the forces.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Jenin, a city where Palestinian security forces have little presence, has long been a bastion of armed struggle against Israel. The city and an adjacent refugee camp have been the focus of Israel’s monthslong operation, with an intense 2-day offensive last month the height of those efforts. Israel deployed armed drones and hundreds of troops, leaving vast destruction and killing 12 Palestinians, most of them militants. An Israeli soldier also died.
Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see the violence as a natural response to 56 years of occupation, including stepped-up settlement construction by Israel’s government and increased violence by Jewish settlers.
The ongoing violence in the West Bank has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades, with more than 170 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the start of 2023, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed.
At least 27 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the beginning of the year.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.
Israeli raid on Jenin kills Palestinian
https://arab.news/prs8z
Israeli raid on Jenin kills Palestinian
- Israel launched near-nightly raids in response to a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks
Gazans salvage ancient books in mosque library damaged by war
- The Great Omari Mosque library sustained terrible damaged during the war in Gaza
- The mosque now stands largely ruined, with its library littered with rubble and dust
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Inside the dusty shell of one of the oldest libraries in the Palestinian territories, a group of Gazan volunteers work diligently to salvage what remains of their ancient cultural heritage.
The Great Omari Mosque library sustained terrible damaged during the war in Gaza, which erupted in October 2023 and devastated swathes of the Palestinian territory, including cultural and religious sites.
The mosque — in the old town of Gaza City — now stands largely ruined, with its library littered with rubble and dust.
“I was shocked and stunned when I saw the extent of the destruction in the library,” Haneen Al-Amsi told AFP, saying the scenes of devastation had spurred her to help launch the restoration initiative.
Amsi, who heads the Eyes on Heritage Volunteer Foundation, said the western part of the library was burned when the mosque was hit, causing irreversible damage.
“The library was estimated to contain about 20,000 books, but currently we are left with fewer than 3,000 or 4,000,” she explained.
Among the debris, volunteers hoping to restore the collection pored over charred fragments of manuscript and shards of yellowed paper.
“The library of the Great Omari Mosque is considered the third largest library in Palestine after the Al-Aqsa Mosque library and the Ahmed Pasha Al-Jazzar library,” Amsi said.
“It is an important historical library that contains original manuscripts and a diverse collection of books on jurisprudence, medicine, Islamic law, literature and various other subjects.”
Gaza’s history stretches back thousands of years, making the tiny territory a treasure trove of archaeological artefacts from past civilizations including Canaanites, Egyptians, Persians and Greeks.
But more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas took a heavy toll on Gaza’s heritage sites.
As of January 2026, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO, had verified damage to 150 sites since the start of the war on October 7, 2023 sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel.
These include 14 religious sites and 115 buildings of historical or artistic interest.
- ‘Represent history’ -
Inside one of the library’s old stone rooms, one woman used a paintbrush to dust off an old tome, while other volunteers wearing facemasks and gloves crouched on the floor to leaf through piles of books.
“The condition of the rare and historical books is deplorable due to their being left for more than 700 to 800 days,” Amsi said, talking of “immense damage and gunpowder residue” on the volumes.
An independent United Nations commission said in June 2025 that Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amounted to war crimes.
“Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed more than half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip,” the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report.
Israel rejected the commission as “an inherently biased and politicized mechanism of the Human Rights Council” and said the report was “another attempt to promote its fictitious narrative of the Gaza war.”
For Amsi, the importance of restoring the books lay in preserving crucial historic records.
“These books represent the history of the city and bear witness to historical events,” she said.
