Middle East Monitor / July 17, 2023
The Israeli occupation forces yesterday stormed the city of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank, wounding dozens of Palestinians, Anadolu news agency reported.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said five men were injured and arrived at Beit Jala Governmental Hospital as a result of the occupation’s aggression on Bethlehem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (RCS) said its medics treated 37 injuries in the field including 35 cases of suffocation while two people were taken to hospital.
The Israeli army claimed, in a joint statement with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), that it had arrested a man suspected of carrying out a shooting attack targeting settlers east of Bethlehem earlier in the day.
The occupation army also arrested, according to the statement, “two other suspects and confiscated the car used in the operation as well as an M-16 rifle.”
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu that the Israeli military vehicles stormed Bethlehem and surrounded the Al-Ribat Mosque on Al-Quds-Hebron Street, near the Palestinian security services compound, and arrested three Palestinians while besieging the mosque.
It also closed all entrances to Bethlehem and a number of nearby villages.
Since the beginning of the year, the West Bank has been witnessing a state of severe tension, which resulted in the killing of 146 Palestinians by the Israeli occupation army and the wounding of about 6,000 others in addition to the killing of 21 Israelis and the wounding of 86, according to the United Nations records.
