JENIN, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces were operating Tuesday in the northern West Bank, nearly a week into military raids in the occupied territory that the Palestinian health ministry said killed at least 27.
An Israeli air strike overnight that the military said targeted militants in Tulkarem killed a 15-year-old Palestinian, said a hospital source in the city.
In total, “there are 30 martyrs and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since Wednesday,” when the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.
The toll includes three deaths in the Hebron area in the southern West Bank, in incidents unrelated to the raids in the north.
On the seventh day of Israel’s major “counter-terrorism” operation in the northern West Bank, the focus remained in the Jenin area, where according to the Palestinian health ministry at least 18 have been killed since Wednesday.
The military on Monday said its forces had killed 14 militants in Jenin and apprehended “25 terrorists.”
In a separate incident, a 16-year-old girl was killed by the Israeli army in the town of Kfar Dan, in the Jenin governorate, the health ministry said Tuesday, without specifying whether she was part of the 18 killed in the area.
An AFP correspondent said the streets were empty and shops were closed in Jenin on Tuesday, with Israeli armored vehicles and army bulldozers as well as ambulances among the few vehicles on the roads.
The correspondent said paved streets had been overturned by Israeli bulldozers in several areas, which the army says is a way to detonate explosive devices hidden under roads.
The Jenin city council said that 70 percent of roads and streets have been destroyed since the start of the raid.
Bashir Matahen, a municipality spokesperson, said about 20 kilometers of water, sewage, communication and electricity lines were destroyed, including 80 percent of the city’s water pipes.
The municipality lacked the funds to carry out all the necessary repairs, he told AFP.
Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp — where army bulldozers also destroyed infrastructure — have long been a bastion of Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
The military carries out regular incursions into Palestinian population centers, but such operations are rarely conducted simultaneously as in the northern West Bank in recent days.
In Tulkarem, near Jenin, the Israeli military said on Monday night that its aircraft struck a Palestinian militant cell “that shot at security forces during the counter-terrorism operation.”
A medical source at the Tulkarem government hospital told AFP on Tuesday that a 15-year-old teenager was killed in the strike that also wounded his father and four others.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams handled several shrapnel injuries in Tulkarem, including one of its paramedics.
On Tuesday Israeli military vehicles including bulldozers were seen on the streets of Tulkarem, where roads have also been damaged or destroyed, said an AFP journalist.
One man, holding a Palestinian flag, was standing defiantly in front of the bulldozers.
Further south, Israeli forces entered the Birzeit University campus near Ramallah before dawn on Tuesday, confiscating property from the student council, the institution said in a statement.
Violence in the Palestinian territory has surged since Hamas’s October 7 attack triggered war in the Gaza Strip, which is separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 637 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the UN figures from last week.
At least 23 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
Israel presses West Bank raids that Palestinians say killed 27
https://arab.news/94zsb
Israel presses West Bank raids that Palestinians say killed 27
- An Israeli air strike overnight that the military said targeted militants in Tulkarem killed a 15-year-old Palestinian
- In total, “there are 30 martyrs and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since Wednesday,” when the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids
Gaza’s living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5
- Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, hospital authorities said Tuesday.
Dangerous living conditions persist in Gaza after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls. A ceasefire has been in effect since Oct. 10. But aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
The dead include two women, a girl and a man, according to Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday a 1-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight, while the spokesman for the UN’s children agency said over 100 children and teenagers have been killed by “military means” since the ceasefire began.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said it exchanged fire Tuesday with six people spotted near its troops deployed in southern Gaza, killing at least two of them in western Rafah.
Family mourns relatives killed by wall collapse
Three members of the same family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 8-meter (26-foot) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area along the Mediterranean shore of Gaza City, Shifa Hospital said. At least five others were injured.
Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.
“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
A second woman was killed when a wall fell on her tent in the western part of the city, Shifa Hospital said.
Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported.
The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the war. When storms strike the territory, Palestinian rescue workers warn people against seeking shelter inside damaged buildings for fears of collapse. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.
In the central town of Zawaida, Associated Press footage showed inundated tents Tuesday morning, with people trying to rebuild their shelters.
Yasmin Shalha, a displaced woman from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, stood against winds that lifted the tarps of tents around her as she stitched hers back together with needle and thread. She said it had fallen on top of her family the night before, as they slept.
“The winds were very, very strong. The tent collapsed over us,” the mother of five told AP. “As you can see, our situation is dire.”
On the shore in southern Gaza, tents were swept into the Mediterranean. Families pulled what was left from the sea, while some built sand barriers to hold back rising water.
“The sea took our mattresses, our tents, our food and everything we owned,” Shaban Abu Ishaq said, as he dragged part of his tent out of the sea in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis.
Mohamed Al-Sawalha, a 72-year-old man from the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya, said the conditions most Palestinians in Gaza endure are barely livable.
“It doesn’t work neither in summer nor in winter,” he said of the tent. “We left behind houses and buildings (with) doors that could be opened and closed. Now we live in a tent. Even sheep don’t live like we do.”
Residents aren’t able to return to their homes in Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip.
Child death toll in Gaza rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the 1-year-old in the central town of Deir Al-Balah was the seventh fatality due to the cold conditions since winter started. Others included a baby just seven days old and a 4-year-old girl, whose deaths were announced Monday.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said Tuesday at least 100 children under the age of 18 — 60 boys and 40 girls — have been killed since the truce began due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflect incidents where enough details have been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He said hundreds of children have been wounded.
While “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, they have not stopped, Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else,” he said.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others into Gaza.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
