Two Palestinians were killed in a shootout between Israeli soldiers near Tulkarem in the north of the occupied West Bank on Thursday morning, sources said.
Abdoul Rahman Atta, 23, and Houzayfa Faris, 27, were killed by “occupation bullets” (Israel, editor’s note), the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a press release, without giving further details about the deaths. circumstances of her death.
The Israeli army, for its part, confirmed in a press release that it had “neutralized two terrorists” after what it said was a shooting at an “Israeli vehicle” near the Palestinian village of Shoufa, southeast of Tulkarem.
Not far away, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Tulkarem, Israeli forces also conducted “anti-terrorism activities,” according to another military press release.
In this raid in the Palestinian autonomous zone (where internal security and the maintenance of public order are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority under the terms of the so-called Oslo II agreement), five members of the Israeli border police were injured, three of them, according to the army Some of them were seriously injured by an explosive device.
For its part, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement, said on Telegram that some of its members had been involved in “clashes” with Israeli forces in the Tulkarem camp.
At least 245 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the start of the year, according to an AFP count from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, the majority of civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.