Israel occupation forces kill two more Palestinians in West Bank raid

The Israel occupation forces killed two more Palestinians early today during a raid in the occupied West Bank, Reuters has reported, citing the official Palestinian news agency WAFA. This brings to five the number of Palestinians killed in different incidents within several hours.

According to eyewitness Yousef Nimer, Israeli forces began firing at people he was sitting with outside a hospital in the city of Jenin as they were finishing Suhoor, the pre-dawn meal during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

“I said, look, there is something coming towards us. We ran away, then a sniper started to shoot at us. Some crawled and some ran away. The people who ran away got injured and those who crawled were saved,” said Nimer, who was wounded in the incident. He pointed to a hole in one of the hospital’s walls that he said had been made by a bullet.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, Israeli police said an armed civilian guard shot and “neutralised” a suspect in a stabbing attack at a military checkpoint between occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The condition of the suspect, whom police identified as a 15-year-old Palestinian, was not immediately clear. Israel’s ambulance service said two security personnel who sustained mild to moderate stab wounds had been taken to hospital.

Israeli forces also shot dead a 13-year-old Palestinian from a refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Tuesday night, and killed two others at a checkpoint, said the Israeli police. They claimed that the boy was shot after aiming fireworks at forces stationed in an observation post.

In the checkpoint incident, the police said five people were seen igniting explosives and intending to hurl them at the road, prompting Israeli forces to open fire and arrest the suspects. Police did not confirm any deaths and said that there were no casualties among its ranks.

Israel has stepped up raids in the occupied West Bank since it began its military offensive against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in October. UN records show that at least 358 people in the occupied West Bank have been killed since then, a quarter of them children.

READ: Israel violence against Palestinian children increased after 7 October, UN told