Israeli forces kill six in raid on West Bank refugee camp
Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday, killing at least six Palestinians, including a Hamas gunman suspected of fatally shooting two brothers from a Jewish settlement near the village of Huwara.
Witnesses said fighting broke out after residents of the camp saw Israeli soldiers getting out of a furniture truck near a house on a hill overlooking the centre of the sprawling camp and fighters immediately opened fire.
In the ensuing gun battle, Israeli forces surrounded a house where the suspected gunman had barricaded himself with other fighters, and used shoulder-fired missiles against the building, a statement from the military said. The Palestinian health ministry said six Palestinians were killed and at least 16 wounded. One member of the Israeli police force was wounded and three lightly hurt.
The military identified the gunman as Abdel-Fattah Kharusha, a member of the Islamist group Hamas, who it said shot two Israelis while they sat in their car at a checkpoint near the Palestinian village of Huwara in the occupied West Bank on Feb. 26. It said his two sons had been arrested in a raid at the same time on the city of Nablus, another centre of militant activity.
Hamas, which runs the blockaded Gaza Strip but which also has fighters in the West Bank, issued a statement claiming Kharusha as a member and saying he carried out the Huwara double killing, the latest in a series of deadly attacks on Israelis by Palestinians this year.
Jenin, one of the major centres of militant activity in the West Bank where armed fighters parade openly, has been raided repeatedly by Israeli forces during months of violence that has caused increasing fears of a repeat of the Intifadas or uprisings of the 1980s and early 2000s.
“The risk – not just to Palestine and to Israel but to the region – of the situation escalating out of hand is significant,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, told reporters in London.
The shooting of the two Israeli brothers triggered a revenge attack by Jewish settlers who killed a Palestinian man and torched dozens of houses and cars in a rampage described as a “pogrom” by a senior Israeli commander.
The rampage triggered worldwide outrage and condemnation, which was increased when ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has responsibility for aspects of the West Bank administration, said Huwara should be “erased”. Smotrich later offered a partial retraction.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken overnight reiterated calls for both sides to de-escalate tensions, and the violence is also expected to be raised by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this week when he visits Israel.
However, there has been no sign of any let up in the violence, ahead of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover festival.
