Jerusalem, Nov 14 (EFE).- At least six Palestinians were killed in Israeli military raids in the northern part of the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, marking the latest surge in violence that has claimed 400 lives this year, the highest toll in nearly two decades.
The Palestinian health ministry reported that two people died in an early morning raid, while four more lost their lives shortly after sunrise in the western city of Tulkarm.
The deceased Palestinians were Saed Salman Abu Tahoun, 32; Khaled Ghanem, 25; Musab Omar Al-Ghoul, 21; Hazem Hosri, 28; Mahmud Ali Hadayda, 25; and Walid Musai, 26.
Israeli military raids in the West Bank have intensified since the conflict with the Islamist Hamas group began on October 7.
The escalating violence over the past six weeks has resulted in at least 193 deaths and more than 2,700 injuries in the West Bank.
The official Wafa news agency alleged that Israeli military forces broke into the city, sparking clashes with youths on Monday evening.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, the violence in Tulkarm left 12 people injured due to gunshots fired by Israeli snipers deployed on the roofs of houses and buildings.
The Israeli army has not provided any information about the raid.
The health ministry reported that Israeli troops obstructed the transfer of an injured girl from Tulkarm to Nablus on Monday night at the Enab checkpoint.
“They prevented the ambulance from leaving Tulkarm hospital and forced the girl and her mother to leave and get into a civilian vehicle,” the ministry said.
The news agency reported that a bulldozer razed Al-Madares Street at the entrance to a refugee camp in the city.
Israeli forces stormed several homes, occupying their roofs to fire live bullets “at everything that moved,” the news agency said.
This marks the second Israeli incursion into Tulkarem in a week, following one in which four Palestinians died in a raid to arrest alleged Hamas militants and another in the early weeks of the conflict in which 13 Palestinians lost their lives, several of them in a drone airstrike.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Israel has detained more than 1,560 Palestinians in the West Bank, with 940 allegedly linked to Hamas.
The West Bank experienced its deadliest day on November 9 since 2002, the height of the Second Intifada, with 18 deaths throughout the territory, 14 of them in Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian militants.
The occupied West Bank is experiencing its worst spiral of violence in two decades. This year, 401 Palestinians, including militants and civilians, have been killed. Eighty-five of the deceased were minors.
Simultaneously, the area has seen the proliferation of new Palestinian armed groups, which increasingly carry out attacks, resulting in 36 deaths on the Israeli side.
Most of them were settlers, including five minors and six uniformed personnel. EFE
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