RAMALLAH: The Israeli army raided the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday, leaving 14 people wounded as troops fanned out across the city center, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
Tensions have remained high in the occupied West Bank since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war, with repeated raids by the Israeli army on Palestinian population centers, particularly in the north.
The Red Crescent said at least 14 people were wounded in the latest raid. Seven were hit by live rounds, while the rest were injured by rubber bullets or tear-gas inhalation.
It added that Israeli forces were “preventing our teams from reaching the injured in a besieged area.”
An AFP journalist saw soldiers on the ground around Al-Manara Square in the city center and on balconies overlooking it.
The Israeli army confirmed it had launched an operation in the area but did not provide more details.
Although the army has carried out frequent operations in the cities and refugee camps of the northern West Bank, it has done so relatively rarely in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinians were seen throwing stones at troops as they began the operation, which appeared to target currency exchange offices in particular.
Witnesses told AFP that the army withdrew in early afternoon.
Violence in the West Bank has intensified since the October 2023 attack. At least 972 Palestinians — including both militants and civilians — have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Authority figures.
In the same period, at least 36 Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, have been killed in attacks or military operations in the territory, according to Israeli figures.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians and 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.
Israel raid wounds 14 in West Bank’s Ramallah: Red Crescent
https://arab.news/mtncy
Israel raid wounds 14 in West Bank’s Ramallah: Red Crescent
- Tensions have remained high in the occupied West Bank since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war, with repeated raids by the Israeli army on Palestinian population centers, particularly in the north
- The Red Crescent said at least 14 people were wounded in the latest raid; seven were hit by live rounds, while the rest were injured by rubber bullets or tear gas inhalation
Trial opens in Tunisia of NGO workers accused of aiding migrants
- Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society”
TUNIS: Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society” in the country.
Six staff members of the Tunisian branch of the France Terre d’Asile aid group, along with 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse, face charges of sheltering migrants and facilitating their “illegal entry and residence.”
If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
A former head of Terre d’Asile Tunisie, Sherifa Riahi, is among the accused and has been detained for more than 19 months, according to her lawyer Abdellah Ben Meftah.
He told AFP that the accused had carried out their work as part of a project approved by the state and in “direct coordination” with the government.
Amnesty denounced what it described as a “bogus criminal trial” and called on Tunisian authorities to drop the charges.
“They are being prosecuted simply for their legitimate work providing vital assistance and protection to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in precarious situations,” Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy MENA chief, said in the statement.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is set to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.
