The Israeli regime has ramped up its aggression on the occupied West Bank by conducting violent raids on several areas in Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm, at a time that the illegal entity is engaged in a genocidal war on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Palestinian media said a Palestinian young man was injured at dawn on Wednesday by live bullets and three others were detained during the occupation forces’ storming of Nablus.
The official Wafa news agency cited sources in the Palestine Red Crescent as reporting that an 18-year-old young man was injured by Israeli bullets after the occupation forces stormed two refugee camps east of the city.
Local sources said the Israeli forces raided the Balata and Askar al-Qadeem refugee camps, which led to the outbreak of confrontations during which the occupation forces fired live bullets, gas and sound bombs, and injured an unspecified number people.
The sources added that Israeli forces stormed several neighborhoods in the city, including Rafidia, and deployed their snipers on the rooftops of some residential buildings. Two young men were detained in Rafidia after the forces raided and searched their homes.
According to other local sources, the occupation forces stormed the village of Qasra, south of Nablus, at dawn and raided al-Ain area and several homes before detaining a youth.
In the northern West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp, the Israeli occupation forces continued for the 8th consecutive day their military aggression by demolishing and bulldozing Palestinian homes and infrastructure, Palestine’s Safa News Agency said.
The forces carried out bombing operations inside the camp’s neighborhoods and burned tarpaulins, which led to a number of citizens’ homes catching fire and burning in al-Swalmeh neighborhood.
The Palestine Red Crescent reported that eight citizens suffocated as a result of the fire caused by the occupation in the camp. The occupation bulldozers also continued to destroy the infrastructure and the citizens’ property in the camp, causing extensive damage and destruction.
The Israeli forces raided Palestinian homes in Balawneh neighborhood, searched them and subjected their residents to interrogation.
In the city of Tulkarm, the regime’s bulldozers closed roads and streets leading to the Tulkarm refugee camp and the Martyr Thabet Hospital, destroying vegetable stalls and citizens’ property and uprooting trees.
Faisal Salama, head of the Popular Committee of Tulkarm camp, described the refugee camp as a disaster area due to repeated acts of aggression, and the tight siege after the occupation forces destroyed the infrastructure and electricity, water, and sewage networks, homes and facilities, in addition to the humanitarian and psychological situation of patients, children, women, and the elderly.
Salama called for international protection for the residents of the camp, and for immediate action to stop Israel’s aggression, war of extermination, systematic displacement and organized terrorism.
The Israeli forces also detained four people from the towns of Bal’a, east of Tulkarm, and Kafr Jamal, south of the city, after raiding their homes, searching them and vandalizing their property.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of the aggression at dawn on Wednesday has risen to 34, including 19 in Jenin, 8 in Tulkarm, 4 in Tubas, and 3 in al-Khalil, bringing to 685 the death toll in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.
The heightened tensions in the occupied West Bank come as the Israeli regime has since October last year been conducting a barbaric onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, claiming the lives of more than 40,000 people, most of them women and children.
