Israeli forces kill teenager amid intensified raids in occupied West Bank | News about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The army places snipers on rooftops around the Balata camp during a fierce raid that killed Muhammad Medhat Amin Amer.

The Israeli army killed a Palestinian teenager and wounded nine others in the Balata refugee camp, as Israeli forces step up attacks in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Saturday that 18-year-old Muhammad Medhat Amin Amer was killed during a nighttime raid on campwhich is located on the outskirts of the city of Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank.

Nine people are in “critical condition” after being wounded in a raid that began Friday night and sparked violent clashes, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that Israeli soldiers entered the camp from the Awarta checkpoint, deploying “snipers on the roofs of surrounding buildings.”

In a statement on Saturday, the Israeli army said soldiers fired at “terrorists”, who were “throwing explosives, Molotov cocktails and rocks, and firing fireworks at the forces”.

Violence in the occupied West Bank has intensified since war broke out in the Gaza Strip following Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023.

Since then, at least 815 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the area, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah.

In the same period, Palestinian attacks in the occupied West Bank killed at least 25 Israelis, according to official Israeli figures.

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Wafa reported that a named Palestinian child was injured in the eye by bullet fragments during an Israeli military attack on houses in the town of Tuq, located southeast of Bethlehem, on Friday.

Israeli forces also carried out separate attacks on three towns in the Hebron area of ​​the occupied West Bank.

Local sources told Wafa that Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints in the town of Idhna, west of Hebron, where they stopped vehicles and checked identity cards.

In Ash-Shuyukh, north of Hebron, Israeli patrols removed Palestinian flags from the city’s streets. In a separate operation, soldiers cordoned off areas in the nearby Arroub refugee camp.

Raids by the Palestinian Authority

Since December, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has also been conducting raids in Jenin refugee camplocated in the north of the territory, saying they want to crush the armed Palestinian resistance.

Clashes have been going on for weeks, and both civilians and members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have been killed.

The family of a Palestinian father and son who were killed in the camp on Friday blamed the PA for their deaths.

However, PA security forces issued a statement denying that their security forces were present in the area. Instead, they blamed fighters in the Jenin refugee camp for the death.

The Jenin Battalion The armed group released a statement blaming the PA for the killing of at least 16 Palestinian civilians since October 2023.

A member of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, identified in reports as Major Rashid Shaqo, also died in the camp on Friday.

A PA official described the killing as a “random incident,” according to the Reuters news agency.