The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least six people hospitalized were in critical condition. Most of the injured were hit with live bullets and dispersed around five hospitals in the occupied West Bank, it said.
Israeli forces announced the raid on Nablus shortly before 10:30 a.m. local time and said it was targeting two members of the Lion’s Den, a Nablus-based armed group, and a local member of the extremist militant group Islamic Jihad. The army surrounded a home in the city’s dense and historic old city, which appeared to be the main target.
The IDF said there were no Israeli casualties. It said “hits were identified” of others caught in crossfire, though the military provided no further details on Palestinian casualties.
At the end of January, another daytime Israeli raid, this time in the city of Jenin, turned into a pitched battle that left 10 Palestinians dead, including a 61-year-old woman.
Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed nearly 60 Palestinians, both fighters and civilians, since the start of 2023 — the deadliest rate in years, and are on track to surpass last year’s high of some 150 Palestinians. At least 11 Israelis have also been killed this year in attacks.
Since a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks last spring, the Israeli military has been conducting near-daily raids across the West Bank, mostly carried out in the middle of the night to arrest militants it says were involved in, or planning, violence inside Israel.
Israel has struggled to control the resurgence of armed fighters, many of them young and impoverished, organizing locally outside the traditional political parties and disillusioned by the failure of political negotiations to end the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
The rise in violence in the West Bank has coincided with the election of Israel’s most right-wing government in years, which includes settler activists who want to annex the entire West Bank.
Hazem Balousha contributed reporting from Gaza City.
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
