Alex Croft
The Independent / September 6, 2024
The adult son of a renowned militant was also among the dead.
A 16-year-old boy was one of six people killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials have said.
Israeli troops shot the teenager in the Far’a refugee camp, south of Tubas, as Israeli forces continue a week of raids on towns and camps in the West Bank.
The Palestine Red Crescent said medics were eventually able to transfer Zeina to hospital where he later died.
Five young men were killed and one was seriously injured when Israeli forces bombed a vehicle in Tubas city, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said. The Israeli military said it had “conducted three targeted strikes on armed terrorists”.
One of the men has been named by the Palestinian health ministry as Mohammed Zubeidi, the son of Zakaria Zubeidi, a militant commander during the Second Intifada who escaped Israeli jail in 2021, before being arrested and returned days later.
Meanwhile, Palestinian health officials say an Israeli strike on a tent camp in Gaza killed four men and wounded two children. The strike early on Thursday hit an encampment near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike on a command and control centre operated by Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group that was embedded in a humanitarian zone.
The nearly 11-month-long war in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people according to Palestinian health officials – and has displaced about 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
The war began after Hamas launched a bloody attack into Israel on 7 October, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead, after most of the rest were released during a ceasefire in November.
Umm Mohammed Wadi, a woman who was staying in a tent near to where the strike occurred, said to AP: “What did they do to be struck while sleeping? No hospital is safe, nor any school or home.”
Israeli security forces continued their assault on towns in the West Bank, with raids reported in Jenin, Tulkarm, and near Bethlehem, according to WAFA news agency.
The agency cited local reports that a 38-year-old man was beaten by Israeli forces and teargas deployed at Za’tara in the south east of Bethlehem. Meanwhile, Jenin suffered its ninth consecutive day of raids.
It comes as Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, published figures indicating that more rockets were fired into Israeli-controlled territory from Lebanon in August than any month since the Hamas attacks on October 7.
The 1,307 rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon and Syria – just over 40 per day on average – an increase of 1,091 in July, 855 in June, and 1,000 in May, The Times of Israel reported. The vast majority of these rockets came from Lebanon.
In the past month, 116 rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza, the latest report says.
Alex Croft is a freelance reporter
