Night strikes on Gaza in response to rockets, ten Palestinians killed in the West Bank

Nine Palestinians were killed on Thursday in Jenin during an Israeli raid presented by the army as an operation against Islamist activists in the refugee camp of this city in the north of the occupied West Bank.

It is the deadliest day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the outbreak of violence between the Israeli army and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza during which at least 49 Palestinians, including combatants but also civilians including children, died in three days in August 2022. The Palestinian Authority denounced “a massacre” and announced that it was ending security cooperation with Israel, a first since 2020.

The Israeli army announced that it was carrying out air raids against the Gaza Strip on Friday in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave. The Israeli armed forces “are currently striking the Gaza Strip,” they said in a statement. Security sources in Gaza, a territory controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, told AFP that 15 strikes had taken place, with no injuries reported.

The US Secretary of State on site Monday

The US State Department said it regretted the raid on Jenin, judging “very important that the parties maintain or even deepen their security coordination”. The head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, is due to visit Israel and the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday to insist, according to Washington, on “the urgent need to take de-escalation measures”. A total of nine people were killed in the Jenin camp, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The United Nations has not recorded such a high toll in a single Israeli operation in the West Bank since it began counting the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2005.

A tenth Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces on Thursday in Al-Ram near Jerusalem in unspecified conditions. “Since the beginning of the year, we have continued to observe the high levels of violence and the negative trends that have characterized 2022”, regretted the UN envoy for the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, judging it “essential to reduce tensions immediately.

“Counter-terrorism”, according to Israel

IDF says raid in Jenin camp was a ‘counter-terror operation’ targeting Islamic Jihad operatives who Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said were planning an attack in Israel . Israel “is not looking for escalation” but is preparing “for all scenarios”, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, according to a statement.

Saudi diplomacy “strongly” denounced the Israeli “incursion”, which Qatar described as “a continuation of the heinous crimes” against “the defenseless Palestinian people”.

Shortly after midnight Thursday night, two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory, according to witnesses and local security sources. The two shots, not immediately claimed, were intercepted by the air defense system, an Israeli army spokesman said.

The Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, carries out almost daily operations through this Palestinian territory, particularly in the areas of Jenin and Nablus (north), strongholds of armed Palestinian factions.

Thursday’s deaths bring to thirty the number of Palestinians, civilians or members of armed groups, killed since the beginning of the year in violence with Israeli forces or civilians.

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