Palestinian health officials said three Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops during West Bank raids to arrest terror suspects on Thursday,
The military, which has been carrying out near-nightly raids in the territory since early last year, said soldiers who entered the Qalandia refugee camp before dawn were bombarded by rocks and cement blocks. In response, the military said troops opened fire at Palestinians throwing objects from rooftops, killing one person who the Palestinian Health Ministry identified as Samir Aslan, 41.
Aslan’s sister, Noura Aslan, said security forces broke into their house at 2:30 a.m. to arrest his 18-year-old son, Ramzi. As Ramzi was being hauled away, his father sprinted to the rooftop to see what was happening, she said. Within moments, an Israeli sniper shot him in the back.
The IDF also raided the northern West Bank on Thursday, entering the village of Qabatiya south of the flashpoint city of Jenin and surrounding a house in the town. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces fatally shot 25-year-old Habib Kamil and 18-year-old Abdel Hadi Nazal.
The military said security forces entered Qabatiya to arrest Muhammad Alauna, a Palestinian suspected of planning militant attacks.
The army said soldiers shot at a number of Palestinians during the raid, including a man who tried to flee the scene with Alauna, a gunman who fired at the forces from inside his car as well as a group of Palestinians throwing rocks at Israeli troops. It was not immediately clear what Kamil was doing when he was shot.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, in the southern West Bank, a Palestinian who stabbed a Jewish settler at a farm was shot dead, Yochai Damri, the head of local settlements, told Israel's Army Radio. It was not clear whether the wounded settler or someone else fired the shots.
In the first two weeks of 2023, nine Palestinians have been killed in the raids, including three teenagers, according to Palestinian officials. No Israeli soldiers have been killed in the operations.
The heightened violence comes as Israel’s new ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox government — the country's most right-wing ever — is charting its legislative agenda, one that is expected to take a tough line against the Palestinians and drive up settlement construction in the West Bank.