At least five Palestinian men have been killed by Israeli gunfire during a raid on Jericho in the eastern occupied West Bank.
The massive raid began early on Monday in the Aqabet Jabr refugee camp, which Palestinians claim has been under Israeli siege for more than a week. It lasted until after dawn.
The governor of Jericho confirmed five fatalities and three other injuries.
In its original statement, the Israeli military claimed to have killed seven men in total, including the two men who tried a shooting attack in Jericho on January 28 and five additional persons who engaged the army in combat during the raid.
In addition to those it claimed were “members of the Hamas cell in Jericho, including the perpetrators of the Almog [checkpoint] operation,” the army claimed it withheld the bodies of five of the murdered individuals.
It wasn’t apparent if every man who was shot was retaliating against the Israeli troops.
There were no casualties as a result of the gunfire on January 28. It happened just two days following a significant Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp that resulted in the deaths of 10 Palestinians.
None of the seven individuals slain were identified by Hamas, the Palestinian organization in charge of the beleaguered Gaza Strip, as members.
Israeli authorities detained recently-released Hamas leader Shaker Amara during the raid on Jericho.
Rajaa Karsou, 48, was also detained by Israeli forces on Monday morning during a raid on the Balata refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
According to the spokesman for Hamas, Hazem Qassem, the “massacre” carried out by the Israeli army in Jericho will “ignite a revolution” among Palestinians.
The ongoing executions “prove the Israeli occupation’s immense perplexity in handling the escalation and spread of resistance in all of the West Bank’s towns, camps, and villages, and its helplessness to stop its escalation,” Qassem said.
The Aqabet Jabr Brigades, a new cross-factional Palestinian armed force with ties to Hamas, made an official public announcement and parade on Saturday.
It is the most recent of several small, armed resistance groups to appear since September 2021, mostly in Jenin and Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
For more than a week, Israeli authorities have restricted mobility in the camp and conducted raids, including one on Saturday that resulted in multiple injuries from live bullets.
The camp was inspected on Sunday, according to Ibrahim Melhem, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh. According to him, the camp’s people have been “under siege for nine days,” and he “held the [Israeli] occupation authority totally responsible for everything residents are exposed to, from harassment and organized terrorism.”
The eighth day of an unfair siege on the city of Jericho by Israeli occupation authorities was denounced by the PA’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday. The ministry described the siege as a “ugly form of collective punishment against all unarmed Palestinian civilians who spend long hours at the occupation checkpoints.”
Since Israel’s attack on Jenin, tensions have significantly risen on the ground. Following the operation, on January 27, a Palestinian opened fire in an unauthorized Jewish community in occupied East Jerusalem, killing seven Israelis.
The Palestinian communities of Beit Hanina, Hizma, and al-land Ram’s had been used as the foundation for the settlement known as Neve Yaakov.
With the killings on Monday in Jericho, 43 Palestinians have been slain by Israeli troops since the year 2023 began, including eight children.
The second Intifada, or mass revolt, ended in 2005, and according to the United Nations, 2022 was the worst year for Palestinians since that time.
