At least 13 Palestinians killed in an Israeli army raid on the refugee camp of Jenin in the northern West Bank. This was confirmed by the local Ministry of Health, which also speaks of 20 injured, 4 of which are serious. Among the dead is also an elderly woman.
The Israeli army reported that it had entered the camp to “capture a prominent terrorist, one of the local Islamic Jihad commanders who has planned a serious attack to be carried out immediately,” military sources say. The operation was allegedly carried out in concert with the Israeli police. Also according to the Israeli army, there would have been “prolonged firefights during which Palestinian militiamen managed to shoot down an army drone”, two terrorists would have been killed “while trying to escape from the building in which they had been surrounded” and one captured.
The Palestinian authorities have a completely different opinion. What is happening in the Jenin refugee camp “is a massacre carried out by the Israeli occupation government with the complicity of the international community which remains silent,” said Palestinian presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh. “Inaction and international silence – he added – are what encourage the occupation government to commit massacres against our people in front of the world and to continue its policy of escalation”.
According to what Akram Rajoub, governor of Jenin told the Associated Press, the Israeli army prevented medical teams from evacuating the wounded, and the military fired tear gas that penetrated the government hospital, hitting the newborns and interrupting the interventions surgical.