MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / September 11, 2024
Five men killed by air strike in Tubas and five emergency service workers detained in Tulkarm while transporting children out of the city.
Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Tubas on Wednesday, as it continued mass raids across the territory, including by detaining emergency service workers in Tulkarm.
The five men were killed in an Israeli air strike at dawn near Al-Tawhid Mosque in Tubas.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it received the bodies after Israeli authorities initially prevented ambulances from reaching the site.
WAFA news agency identified the killed men as Mohammad Sawafta ,19, Majd Sawafta, 23, Qais Sawafta, 24, Yassin Sawafta, 22, and Talaba Basharat, 18.
The air strike came during a wider Israeli operation in the outskirts and neighbourhoods of Tubas, including the use of reconnaissance planes and military helicopters. The raid involved a siege on the Turkish government hospital, with roads surrounding the medical facility being blocked off.
Meanwhile, an Israeli operation in Tulkarm refugee camp entered a second day, causing significant damage to Palestinian infrastructure and property.
Several streets were destroyed by Israeli bulldozers in the camp on Wednesday, according to WAFA. On Tuesday evening, Israeli troops forcibly ejected many of the camp’s residents from their homes ahead of the second day of the raid.
The PRCS said that five of its staff members were arrested at dawn in Tulkarm while they were transporting a patient and helping children leave the camp.
As of Wednesday afternoon, they were still being detained and PRCS had lost contact with its detained staff members.
Footage seen by Middle East Eye showed a residential building in the camp on fire.
Palestinian killed after car ramming
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israel’s army said it killed the perpetrator of a car ramming attack in the illegal Israeli outpost of Givat Asaf, near Ramallah.
The attacker was identified as Hayil Dhaifallah, a 58-year-old Palestinian from the town of Rafat. An Israeli man was critically wounded in the ramming attack.
On Tuesday evening, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel to initiate “fundamental changes” in the way it conducts military operations in the occupied West Bank after the killing of American national Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.
Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces last week after participating in a protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the town of Beita, south of Nablus.
An activist who was with Eygi at the time told Middle East Eye that she and other volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement had been attending the weekly demonstration at Beita.
The activist said they retreated from soldiers, who had shot tear gas into the crowd. Then two rounds of live ammunition were fired at the group, the activist said, one of which struck Eygi in the head.
“It was a deliberate shot to the head,” the activist told MEE.
Since an escalation of Israeli operations in the West Bank on 28 August, at least 47 Palestinians have been killed across Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas and Hebron/Al-Khalil.
According to Palestinian media, at least 699 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem since Israel’s war on Gaza began on 7 October.
During that time, at least 10,400 Palestinians have been detained in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.
