The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Israeli raid, airstrike kill 7 Palestinians in West Bank
Palestinian authorities say seven people were killed Friday during an Israeli military operation in the area of the West Bank city of Jenin, where the Israeli military said it had been carrying out “counterterrorism activity” that included an airstrike.
The military said Israeli soldiers “encircled a building where terrorists have barricaded themselves in” and the soldiers exchanged fire with those inside, while an airstrike “struck several armed terrorists” in the area.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said a total of seven people were killed, but did not specify whether they died in the exchange of gunfire or the airstrike. The Islamic Jihad militant group said four of the dead were its members.
The clashes in Jenin, a known militant stronghold where the Israeli army frequently operates, came a day after an Israeli anti-settlement monitoring group said the government plans to build nearly 5,300 new homes in settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The construction plans revealed by the Peace Now group are part of the hard-line government’s efforts to beef up settlements as part of a strategy of cementing Israel’s control over the West Bank to prevent a future Palestinian state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — for an independent state.
Violence has spiraled in the West Bank since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel by Hamas militants who killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 others as hostages. The Palestinian Health Ministry says over 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war.