According to reports from the Palestinian health ministry and the Red Crescent, Israeli troops shot and killed one Palestinian and injured at least four others, including two who are in critical condition, in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. According to Reuters, the Palestinian health ministry confirmed an early Thursday morning shooting death as Palestinian rebels claimed to have confronted Israeli police and Israelis in the Nablus area.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that at least four Palestinians were shot during clashes with Israeli forces in the eastern part of Nablus, a city in the northern occupied West Bank that has historically been a hub of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. Two of the wounded were in critical condition. The Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, which has a base in Nablus, claimed that its members were “fighting the occupation forces and groups of settlers who had stormed the area of Joseph’s Tomb,” referring to a shrine in the city where Palestinians and Israelis have repeatedly clashed. Israeli forces raided the Jenin refugee camp earlier this month, killing 12 Palestinians, injuring approximately 100 more, forcing thousands to flee, and wreaking widespread destruction on civilian infrastructure. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest killing of a Palestinian.
During the Jenin operation, an Israeli soldier was killed. Israeli forces deployed 150 soldiers and dozens of armored vehicles during an assault on Nablus in February, killing 11 Palestinians and injuring more than 80 civilians, some of them gravely. In a similar operation on the Jenin refugee camp less than a month prior, 10 Palestinians had been slain. There has been an upsurge in Israeli raids, settler rampages in Palestinian communities, and Palestinian attacks on the streets in the previous 15 months, all of which have contributed to a heightened state of violence in the West Bank.
