NABLUUS, West Bank (AP) — Israeli troops raided an armed group’s stronghold in the occupied West Bank’s second-largest city, detonating a bomb laboratory and engaging in a firefight, the military said Tuesday. Five Palestinians were killed and 20 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The overnight raid in the old city, or kasbah, of Nablus was one of the deadliest in the West Bank in 2022 and came during a period of escalating tensions.
Television footage showed flames and smoke billowing into the night sky over Nablus. The army said it used shoulder-fired missiles. Local residents reported a strong explosion that shook the old town and surrounding areas.
The target of the raid was a group of Palestinian armed thugs calling themselves the Lions’ Den. The group is responsible for the recent fatal shooting of an Israeli soldier and several attempted attacks, the army said.
The five killed during the raid were aged between 20 and 30, the Ministry of Health said. Several wounded are in serious condition, the ministry said.
Interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid confirmed that Wadi Huh, the leader of the Lion’s Den group, was killed overnight in a firefight with Israeli forces. Speaking at a conference, he said the operation was a “precise and lethal strike at the heart of the terrorist infrastructure that tries to carry out attacks”.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza held a general strike to protest the killings on Tuesday. Shops remained closed throughout the day in Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza City and other Palestinian cities.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, the army said troops fired on a suspect who threw explosives at them during an arrest near the village of Nebi Saleh. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the death of 19-year-old Qusay al-Tamimi.
Later on Tuesday, dozens of Palestinians gathered near the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel to protest an Israeli military raid on Nablus. Protesters waved Palestinian flags and burned dozens of tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. The protest ended at sunset and there were no reports of injuries.
The site of the protest in eastern Gaza City was one of five that saw weekly protests in 2018 and 2019, during which Israeli snipers killed dozens of Palestinians. The leaders of Hamas in Gaza protested with the demand to ease the blockade. The protests ended with informal agreements reached between the parties through regional mediators.
Continued Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank pose a major challenge for the Palestinian Authority, which rules just over one-third of the territory.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is counting on security cooperation with Israel, especially against his rival Islamic militants, to stay in power. At the same time, this cooperation is very unpopular among Palestinians, who resent Israel’s endless occupation of 56 years.
Young Palestinians are especially frustrated. Small detachments of armed men have formed in some areas, first in the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold, and now in Nablus. These groups defy the Palestinian Authority and carry out attacks on Israeli targets.
During a raid on Tuesday, Israeli forces blew up a bomb laboratory in an apartment in Nablus, the military said. The statement said a number of militants had been targeted and noted that Palestinians were reporting casualties. It was not immediately clear from the wording of the statement whether some of those killed and wounded were injured in the initial ambush and not in the subsequent firefight.
Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, issued a statement describing the ongoing Israeli raids as a war crime.
More than 125 Palestinians have been killed this year in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The fighting escalated after a series of Palestinian attacks killed 19 people in Israel in the spring. The Israeli army says that most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But youths throwing stones protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontation were also killed.
Israel seized the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War and built more than 130 settlements there, many of which resemble small towns with apartment buildings, shopping malls and industrial zones. The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the core of their future state. Most countries consider the settlements to be a violation of international law.
Associated Press writer Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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