Gaza-based resistance movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad have vowed to respond to the Israeli regime’s killing of two Palestinian youths in a violent assault on a refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm.
The latest Israeli atrocity took place on Saturday morning as two Palestinians, identified as Samer Salah Shafiee and Hamza Jamil Kharyoush, were fatally shot by the Israeli occupation forces during a raid on Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm City.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the two 22-year-olds were brought dead to a hospital in Tulkarm due to gunshot wounds to the neck and chest, adding that a third was brought with injuries in the limbs and is in stable condition.
“The Israeli occupation, with its Nazi policy, insists on inflaming tensions in the occupied territories through persisting in its aggression against the Palestinian citizens, their lands and holy sites,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement. “We will continue the battle to defend the sanctities and fight for the freedom of our people.”
Stressing that the new Israeli crime in Nur Shams refugee camp “will never go unanswered,” Qassem said such atrocities by the illegal entity in the West Bank would not succeed in stopping the Palestinian people’s “growing revolutionary tide,” but rather would fuel the flames of revolution.
The Hamas spokesman also pointed out that the Zionist regime is escalating its terror against Palestinian people, by repeating its aggression with assassinations of young men in the occupied West Bank.
In another statement, Islamic Jihad spokesman Tariq Salmi denounced the latest Israeli atrocity in Tulkarm and said the occupying regime was “fully responsible” for the killing of the two Palestinian youths.
“The Palestinian people will continue to make great sacrifices in defense of their land and sanctities, and these sacrifices increase our strength and determination to confront the occupation,” Salmi said in the statement.
“We hold the Zionist occupation fully responsible for the crime in Tulkarm, and we affirm that the response of the resistance and the Palestinian people to this crime and others will come,” he added.
The Islamic Jihad spokesman said the resistance would remain loyal to all the pure blood that is shed on the land of Palestine as a result of the Zionist aggression, and that this loyalty will be translated by the resistance into a response to the crimes, aggression and terror of the occupation.
Over the past months, Israel has ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and cities throughout the occupied territories. As a result of these attacks, dozens of Palestinians have lost their lives and many others have been arrested.
Most of the raids have focused on the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, where Israeli forces have been trying to stifle a growing Palestinian resistance against occupation.
With the latest killings, the Israeli forces have shot and killed 108 Palestinians since the start of the year, including 20 minors and two women, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.