Israeli drone strike kills 2 Palestinians in West Bank

By Aysar Alais

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – An Israeli drone-fired missile killed two Palestinians Thursday in the northern occupied West Bank.

“Two citizens were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in the Jabal Al-Salihin area between the Dhannabah suburb and the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarem,” the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, citing unnamed security sources.

The sources added that Israeli forces immediately stormed the area after the strike, retrieved the bodies of the men and withdrew from the location.

Earlier that evening, the Israeli army raided the Nur Shams refugee camp and imposed a siege on it before launching drone strikes.

Clashes erupted between Palestinian resistance fighters and the Israeli forces, during which an explosive device was detonated near an Israeli bulldozer at the camp's entrance, an Anadolu correspondent reported.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, said their fighters had “detonated locally manufactured explosive devices on Israeli military vehicles, causing direct hits.”

They added that they were engaged in fierce confrontations with Israeli forces in multiple combat zones within the Nur Shams camp, using heavy gunfire.

Later, WAFA confirmed that Israeli drones had bombed several locations between Dhannabah and the Nur Shams camp as well as in the Jabal Al-Nasr area of the camp.

Ambulances were dispatched to the site of the strikes, though there were no immediate reports of additional casualties.

The Israeli military said it had targeted an armed cell in the Tulkarem area using a drone, without providing further details.

Over the past few years, the Israeli military has conducted regular raids in the West Bank, which escalated with the beginning of the war on Gaza on Oct. 7 last year.

Palestinians have also been violently attacked by illegal Israeli settlers.

At least 749 Palestinians have since been killed and over 6,250 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory over the last year, according to the Health Ministry.

In a landmark opinion this July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal and demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala