Ramallah: The Israeli military and police have killed seven Palestinians in two clashes in the West Bank, said Palestinian sources.
Four men, including Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and the Fatah movement, were killed in an Israeli drone attack in the Tulkarm camp in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources told Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.
The sources accused the Israeli military of seizing bodies and barred Palestinian medics from taking them and the injured to hospitals, Xinhua news agency reported.
Meanwhile, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, a hospital in Tulkarm received the body of a Palestinian man killed by Israeli gunfire and at least three injuries.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that the army and police raided the Tulkarm area overnight in a “counterterrorism operation,” exchanging fire with armed Palestinian militants and having dismantled “numerous explosives” that had been planted underneath the roads.
The statement said Ashraf Nafa, head of the Hamas branch in Tulkarm, was killed in the raid for masterminding and carrying out several attacks against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, as well as recruiting new operatives into the faction.
Israeli state-owned Kan TV news said during the raid, the Israeli army targeted a group of armed men by drone.
In a separate clash, two young men were killed by Israeli army gunfire in the southern West Bank town of Sa’ir, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a press statement.
The West Bank has witnessed escalating tension and armed confrontations in various cities, villages and camps since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip on October 7, which, according to Palestinian sources, resulted in the killing of more than 500 Palestinians.
–IANS