Jerusalem, Jan 17 (EFE).- At least seven Palestinians were killed Wednesday after two Israeli drone strikes in the occupied West Bank.
The first drone attack hit the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, with the Israeli army announcing that it had killed the head of local militias Amed Abu Shalal.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that two others were also killed in the strike.
Abu Shalal was killed when the vehicle he was traveling in was struck. An Israeli military spokesperson said he was preparing to carry out an “imminent attack” against Israeli soldiers and was behind other previous “terrorist attacks”.
Israeli troops subsequently stormed the camp, where they raided homes and clashed with local residents.
A second Israeli drone attack on Wednesday killed four Palestinians in the town of Tulkarem, after several hours of military raids in the city, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said.
“Our teams are busy treating four martyrs after the Israeli bombardment in the Tulkarem refugee camp,” the source said in a statement, in the midst of the worst escalation of violence in the West Bank in the last two decades.
Israeli forces on the ground “prevented ambulances and the Red Crescent from entering the area to transport the wounded”, according to Wafa.
Eighty-five Palestinians were arrested during the raids on Wednesday, Wafa reported.
Since last year, drone strikes by Israel in its West Bank operations have increased.
In November, at least five Palestinians were killed in a similar drone strike in Tulkarem, which has suffered several such attacks since Israel tightened its grip on the West Bank in parallel to the conflict against Hamas in Gaza.
In December, an Israeli aerial aircraft killed six Palestinians in the city of Jenin, in the northern West Bank.
The territory is seeing its worst spiral of violence since the Second Intifada uprising (2000-2005).
So far in 2024, 41 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, after more than 520 died last year in violent episodes with Israel, the highest figure since 2002.
Tension in the region escalated further since the outbreak of the Gaza war on Oct. 7.
Since then, 363 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank, while more than 2,650 have been detained by Israeli troops, 1,300 of them “suspected” of links to Hamas.
Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967. EFE
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