JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — At least four Palestinians were killed and 44 wounded during an Israeli military raid Wednesday into the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported, marking the deadliest episode since Israel escalated a crackdown on the occupied territory earlier this year.
Israeli forces said they fatally shot two Palestinians they had been sent to arrest in the camp over their suspected involvement in recent shooting attacks. When soldiers surrounded a house in the camp, a bomb exploded, a gunfight ensued and Israeli troops killed the two Palestinians, the military said. The army later released drone footage showing a large explosion that it said was detonated by militants.
During the raid, armed clashes broke out in the camp as militants hurled rocks and opened fire at arriving troops. Two Palestinians were killed and and at least 44 others were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Amateur video showed one of the men being shot in the head as he appeared to be aiming a weapon at Israeli troops.
Israel has been conducting nightly raids in the northern West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel last spring. Much of that activity has been focused in the Jenin area — where some of the attackers lived. Israel identified one of the Palestinians killed in Wednesday’s raid as Rahman Hazam, the brother of a Palestinian gunman who carried out a deadly shooting attack in central Tel Aviv last April before he was killed by police.
“This was the bloodiest day this year,” said Jamal Huweil, a 52-year-old camp resident and official in the ruling Fatah party. “People are killed, wounded. There’s destruction. Every time (Israeli forces) come into the Jenin camp, our resistance becomes stronger and stronger.”
It was chaos as Israeli troops exchanged fire with Palestinian militants on nearly every street of the crowded camp, sending bullets in all directions. Young protesters rushed to hurl stones and hand grenades at Israeli soldiers and scrambled from gunfire. Israeli armored vehicles and bulldozers rumbled down the battered roads. The clashes escalated as angry crowds of men marched through the camp’s narrow alleys holding aloft the bodies, shrouded in flags of local militant groups, of the killed Palestinians.
“We are here for martyrdom,” they cried.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party identified one of the men killed in the clashes as a…
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