An Israeli was shot dead in a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank on Saturday morning, the Israeli army said, as deadly attacks rocked northern Gaza.
The army said the Israeli man was declared dead after being shot in the town of Qalqilya, and that Israeli forces were currently operating in the area. Israeli forces shot dead two militants in the same West Bank city on Friday.
Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has flared up since World War II Israel-Hamas war erupted last October. Since then, at least 549 Palestinians in the area have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which keeps track of the killings. Palestinians in the West Bank killed at least nine Israelis, including five soldiers, during the same period, according to UN data.
Majdi Mohammed/AP
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency group operating in Gaza, said it had pulled 19 bodies on Saturday from a building hit by an Israeli attack in an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City.
The group said its aid workers were also digging for survivors at the site of another attack in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. The Associated Press has not been able to verify the emergency group’s figures.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets hit two Hamas military sites in the Gaza City area, but did not elaborate.
A separate Israeli attack on Saturday in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley killed a member of the military wing of the Islamic Group, a Sunni Muslim faction closely linked to Hamas, according to the group. The member was the seventh member killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the war began.
The war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7 when Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage. Israel responded by bombing and invading the enclave, killing more than 37,400 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count.
Israeli citizens are prohibited from entering Qalqilya and other West Bank areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
In April, the death of a 14-year-old Israeli settler led to a series of settler attacks on Palestinian towns in the area. The army said the boy had been killed and later arrested a Palestinian in connection with the killing.
In 2014, tensions escalated over the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, eventually sparking a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the deadliest round of fighting between the two sides at the time.
In recent years, the PA’s influence in the northern West Bank has declined as militant groups have become increasingly powerful.
Jehad Alshrafi/AP
Also Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died from his wounds after being shot by Israeli forces in Ramallah last week. In response to the shooting, the Israeli army said its forces raided the Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah last Friday to arrest a suspect and then opened fire on a group of Palestinians pelting them with stones.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, during the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek these areas as part of their hoped-for independent state.
