Israeli soldiers operate next to a military bulldozer during an Israeli raid in Deir al-Ghusun, in the Israeli occupied West Bank, May 4, 2024.Raneen Sawafta/Reuters
Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in an overnight raid in a village near the city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry and the Israeli military said on Saturday.
The health ministry said it had identified four of the five who died during the raid in Deir al-Ghusun. Israeli forces took some of the dead bodies, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa and a Reuters reporter at the scene.
The Israeli military said an officer from a special police unit was wounded in the operation and hospitalized. It said its forces retaliated using live ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles after they were fired on.
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Saturday’s operation near the flashpoint city of Tulkarm was the latest in a series of clashes in the occupied West Bank between Israeli forces and Palestinians that has been escalating for more than two years but which has picked up in intensity since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October.
According to Palestinian Health Ministry records, 492 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers in the West Bank or East Jerusalem since Oct. 7. Many have been armed fighters but stone-throwing youths and uninvolved civilians have also been killed.
Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
U.S.-backed talks to reach an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled for the past decade but the Gaza war has raised pressure for a revival of efforts to reach a two-state solution.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s seven-month-old assault on the Gaza Strip, say health officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting 252 others, of whom 132 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.