Israeli attack in northern West Bank kills Palestinian and injures five others – Naharnet

Israeli troops carried out an airstrike in the northern West Bank that killed one Palestinian militant and wounded five other people, Palestinian health officials said.

The attack occurred on Sunday in Nour Shams, an urban refugee camp that is a frequent target of the Israeli military and is considered a stronghold of Palestinian militants. The Palestinian state news agency Wafa reported that an Israeli drone fired three missiles and hit a house.

Islamic Jihad identified the dead man as Saeed al-Jaber, one of its local commanders. Wafa said he escaped an earlier drone strike on June 20. There were no details on the identities of the injured. Health officials said two of them were in critical condition.

The Israeli military confirmed an attack on the house and said that militants stationed there, including al-Jaber, were responsible for recent attacks on Israeli targets.

Since the Gaza war began in October, there has been a rise in violence in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the war began. Most of them were killed in Israeli strikes and violent protests. The dead also include bystanders and Palestinians killed in attacks by Jewish settlers.

Israel launched an air and ground offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 37,800 Palestinians were killed in the offensive, although the casualty figure does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.

Israeli forces have been battling Palestinian militants in Shijaiyah, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza, for several days. Israel returned to the neighborhood last week after declaring an end to its operations in the area several months earlier.

Following the withdrawal of Israeli troops, Hamas repeatedly regrouped in the hard-hit areas, raising questions about Israel’s willingness to destroy the militant group’s military capabilities.

The latest operation has forced thousands of residents to flee. The army said on Sunday it had killed dozens of militants in hand-to-hand combat and air strikes and confiscated weapons from a hideout Hamas said it had maintained in a UN-backed school.

Palestinians also continued to flee the area in and around Rafah, the southern Gaza city where Israel says it is in the final stages of an offensive. More than 1.3 million Palestinians have fled Rafah since Israel entered the city in early May.

But with few safe places to go, tens of thousands of people have remained behind, mostly in remote areas that were previously considered safe. Large groups of people fled with tents, mattresses and clothes piled into trucks or donkey-drawn carts. Many searched for shelter on foot. Even places that were considered safe suffer from overcrowding and poor health conditions.

For many Palestinians in the war-torn enclave, this was not their first expulsion. They say the experience is not getting any easier.

“This is the fourth time we have gone from one place to another that they (the Israeli military) say is a safe area, but it turns out it is not,” Mohammad Hajjaj, who was displaced from Shijaiyah in the first weeks of the war, told the Associated Press.

Hajjaj said he and his family woke up to the sound of Israeli tank fire nearby two days ago before they left. “We slept on the street,” he said.

The fleeing Palestinians found space on a plot of land in nearby Khan Younis and began setting up their tents on the sand square alongside dozens of others.

“We came from Muwasi to Khan Younis,” said Mervette Shamlakh, referring to the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” on the coast where basic services are scarce. “It’s the same thing again and we had to flee… we have no idea where to go.”

In Muwasi, dozens of men, women and children queued for hours, crowding around trucks and water tanks in the scorching heat to collect their share of potable and drinkable water. People said water had always been scarce in the sandy area, even before the arrival of the displaced Palestinians.

“I fill a bottle just like this to have a liter of drinking water for the 16 people who live in my house,” Issam Al Dayah told AP as he waited his turn.

“We suffer from everything. Not just water,” said Mai Al Rae after fighting her way through the crowd to fill a bucket. “How long will life go on like this?”

There is a risk that the fighting could spread to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where there are daily skirmishes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants.