A Palestinian woman and 15-year-old boy were murdered during an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) raid in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm on Monday, the Palestine Chronicle reported. This follows a series of Israeli attacks on the town’s Nur Shams refugee camp including a drone strike over the weekend which killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander.
According to local hospital sources speaking with Palestinian news agency Wafa, 47-year-old Nisreen Khaled Damiri and 15-year-old Muhammad Ali Sarhan were killed by Israeli fire during the Monday raid. The Palestinian Health Ministry said four other people were injured by IDF “live fire.” Military tanks blew up a home in the Nour Shams camp, causing a fire to break out, while the Israeli apartheid army blocked civil defense crews from reaching the house.
The IDF entered the camp during the early morning hours with tanks and other armored vehicles, The Jerusalem Post reported one of the vehicles was hit with a roadside bomb. The Alqsa-Martyrs Brigades in Tulkarm said they had targeted the vehicles during the invasion. The resistance group shared footage on their Telegram channel featuring a damaged armored personnel carrier as it was towed out of the refugee camp.
The IDF reportedly imposed a siege on the camp, while vandalizing public and private property as the attack was ongoing, including tearing up the camp’s main water line. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it was treating three injured Palestinians.
On Sunday, the IDF launched a drone strike on the camp killing Saeed Al-Jaber, a commander with the Nour Shams camp battalion of the Al-Quds Brigades. “The Israeli occupation targeted with a missile a house in the Manshiya neighborhood in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm, which led to the death of Saeed Al-Jaber and the injury of five others, including children,” Palestine TV reported.
As AFP notes, in April, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported a two-day Israeli raid on the camp saw 14 Palestinians killed.
Violence, ethnic cleansing, and home demolitions have soared in the West Bank including East Jerusalem amid Tel Aviv’s genocidal onslaught in the besieged Gaza Strip. At least 556 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF as well as illegal settlers, including almost 140 children.
The slaughter comes as the extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a special position in the Defense Ministry acting as the West Bank’s de facto governor, is making moves towards full annexation of the territory where millions of Palestinians and Christians live under Tel Aviv’s apartheid rule.
In the meantime, mass arrests continue apace with over 9,465 Palestinians rounded up by the IDF. Wafa also covered another Israeli attack on Monday where large swaths of agricultural land south of Nablus in the village of Madama were burned by settlers from the Jewish-only colony of Yitzhar. The settlers assaulted the village and fired shots at residents attempting to extinguish the flames.
In April, Smotrich appointed Hillel Roth as a deputy in the occupied territory’s Civil Administration focusing on regulations for illegal settlements and outposts. Roth worked as an official with an NGO tied to Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism party and is a former resident of Yitzhar, an infamously violent and radical settlement.
