Israeli attacks in West Bank killed at least eight people, officials and residents say
By Kareem Khadder and Sana Noor Haq, CNN
(CNN) — A series of Israeli raids and airstrikes in towns and villages in the occupied West Bank that stretched overnight from Monday into late Tuesday have killed at least eight people, according to Palestinian authorities and local residents.
Two Palestinians were killed in the town of Tamoun, said the governor of nearby Tubas, Ahmad Assad, alleging that one of the bodies was removed from the scene by the Israeli military with a bulldozer. CCTV footage from the neighborhood, seen by CNN, appeared to show a bulldozer moving a body.
In the village of Al-Shuhada, near the city of Jenin, an Israeli airstrike killed two people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, who were identified by local residents as a man and his nephew. Footage obtained by CNN of the aftermath of the strike shows bloodied footprints smeared along a dusty pathway.
Elsewhere, at least four people were killed in the city of Qabatya, according to the health ministry and emergency responders. Two were killed by Israeli gunfire, and two others killed when an Israeli military vehicle rammed a car and opened fire, according to residents and video seen by CNN.
Qatari-owned Al Araby TV alleged that Israeli fire in Qabatya also injured a Palestinian employee working there. Rabe’e Al-Munir, a photojournalist, is now hospitalized in stable condition, it said.
CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the incidents. Israel has previously described its stepped-up military offensives in the West Bank as targeting militants and “terrorist infrastructure.”
The bloodshed comes as violence surges in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has intensified incursions following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 775 Palestinians, including 167 children, in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, the Palestinian health ministry reported on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, Israeli settlers vandalized and set fire to vehicles in the city of Al-Bireh, in what Ramallah governor Laila Ghannam warned “could have ended in a massacre.”
Video taken by CNN in the aftermath of the fire showed burned vehicles, some reduced to ashes, next to an apartment block with burn marks on its walls. A community of residents, including young children, can be seen standing bewildered outside the block.
“I woke up to the sound, I started screaming,” said Ihab Al-Zahben, a father-of-four who lives in the area, to CNN.
The West Bank, a territory that lies between Israel and Jordan, is home to 3.3 million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, as well as hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis who began settling there some 57 years ago.
In total, nearly 1,600 settler attacks against Palestinians have been recorded since October 7, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on October 31.
CNN’s Mick Krever contributed reporting.
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