Concerns over escalating violence after Israeli raid kills 9 Palestinians
Israeli forces on Thursday killed nine Palestinians during a West Bank raid marking the deadliest single day in the area in decades. The escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence has raised concerns for world leaders.
US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, fears the security situation could worsen after two rockets were fired from Gaza early on Friday and Israel responded with airstrikes on the territory.
Israeli forces kill 9
Israeli commandos killed seven gunmen and two civilians in the occupied West Bank. Israeli troops reportedly encircled buildings amid a storm of gunfire, grenades and tear gas in the packed Jenin refugee camp. The Israeli military says its troops went in to arrest Islamic Jihad militants planning “major attacks”.
A 61-year-old woman and a male civilian were among the dead, the Palestinian health ministry said, and about 20 more people were seriously injured.
Two of those killed were claimed by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another four by Hamas and one by the armed wing of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.
The raid’s death toll is the highest in a single operation ever recorded by the UN.
In response to the raid deaths, Palestinian militants fired two rockets shortly after midnight on Friday from the Gaza Strip. The rockets were intercepted by missile defences. Israel then carried out strikes in Gaza.
There were no immediate claims for the rocket fire and no immediate reports of deaths from the subsequent Israeli airstrikes.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was not looking to escalate the situation. But he’s told security forces “to prepare for all scenarios in the various sectors”.
Tensions in the decades-long conflict have soared as a result of the rising violence and recent polling suggests that support for the formant peace process has reached an all-time low on both sides.
