Israeli military forces have shot and killed two more Palestinian youths during a violent raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, bringing to ten the number of Palestinians killed by the occupying regime this past week.
In a statement on Thursday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that “two youths died of injuries sustained in an Israeli attack in the Jenin district” earlier in the day.
The raid marked the sixth day of an Israeli “counterterrorism operation” in the occupied West Bank, which has mainly targeted Jenin.
One of the Palestinians killed was identified as Shas Kamamji, the brother of Ayham Kamamji, one of the prisoners who managed to escape the highly-fortified Gilboa prison in September.
The other was identified as Mustafa Abu-Arub, who was shot dead at the western entrance of Jenin. He was a resident of Misilyah village, south of Jenin.
According to Palestine’s official Wafa news agency, a large number of Israeli forces barged their way into al-Yamun and Kafr Dan towns, west and northwest of the city, triggering violent confrontations in which six other Palestinians were also wounded, one of them critically.
Israeli forces also arrested four Palestinians, including three brothers of Kamamji, after storming their houses in Kafr Dan and another from al-Yamun.
The regime has stepped up its deadly aggression across Palestinian territories since the start of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, causing Palestinians to ramp up their resistance operations in response.
Most recently, a shooting operation killed at least three people and injured eight others in the heart of Tel Aviv. The attack was conducted when a Palestinian youth, identified as Ra’ad Fathi Hazem, entered a pub on a crowded main street in the city and began firing his weapon.
The 28-year-old, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp, was killed by Israeli forces in a pre-dawn firefight near a mosque on the first Friday of Ramadan.
Various Palestinian resistance groups and the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah have hailed the incident as a “heroic operation.”
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had been “continuing recent counterterrorism activities,” a week after Hazem killed three people in Tel Aviv, without commenting on the latest Palestinian deaths.
A total of 20 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since March 22, as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has already given Israeli forces a free hand to “defeat” what he called “terror” in the West Bank.
The latest killing of Palestinians came several hours after Israeli troops shot dead 14-year-old Qusai Hamamrah in the village of Husan near the city of Bethlehem and a 20-year-old Palestinian youth, named Omar Alyan, near the city of Ramallah in the Silwad village.
Five Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire during the past 24 hours.