Israeli Troops Kill 12 Palestinians, Desecrate West Bank Mosque

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) ‑Israeli troops killed a youth at a hos­pi­tal and read out Jewish prayers at a mosque in the occu­pied West Bank city of Jenin dur­ing raids that Palestinian author­i­ties said on Thursday killed 12 and that Israel said helped cap­ture dozens of militants.

The Palestinian gov­ern­ment crit­i­cised the oper­a­tion inside Jenin as a “dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion” and in a state­ment said the des­e­cra­tion of the mosque by some Israeli troops fanned reli­gious ten­sion. Israel’s army said it would dis­ci­pline the soldiers.

Palestinians see the West Bank as cen­tral to a future inde­pen­dent state. Allies of Israel back­ing its war against Hamas mil­i­tants in Israeli-occu­pied Gaza have urged restraint, includ­ing pun­ish­ing Israeli set­tlers in the West Bank accused of armed attacks on Palestinians.

In recent years Israel has great­ly expand­ed set­tle­ments in the West Bank, leav­ing less ter­ri­to­ry for a viable Palestinian state.

Deadly blood­shed had been wors­en­ing in the West Bank even before the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel from Gaza that killed 1,200 Israelis and led to an Israeli offen­sive that has killed near­ly 19,000 Palestinians in Gaza. In the two months since, Israelis have killed at least 287 West Bank Palestinians.

The Israeli mil­i­tary, which says it has been step­ping up oper­a­tions against Palestinian mil­i­tant groups in the West Bank, con­firmed killing “more than 10” peo­ple it called ter­ror­ists in the Jenin raids.

In a state­ment, the mil­i­tary said Israeli air­craft killed sev­er­al of the peo­ple after they attacked secu­ri­ty forces. It said on Thursday evening that the oper­a­tion had concluded.

Witnesses in Jenin described gun­men exchang­ing fire with the sol­diers and det­o­nat­ing home­made explo­sive devices. Army bull­doz­ers dam­aged streets and water pipes, res­i­dents said.

A mil­i­tary state­ment said sol­diers dis­man­tled bomb lab­o­ra­to­ries and under­ground tun­nel shafts search­es in a counter-ter­ror­ism oper­a­tion that began on Dec. 12 in Jenin, a strong­hold of Palestinian militants.

Controlled explo­sions and gun­fire from Israel’s own forces slight­ly injured four sol­diers, the state­ment said.

Images cir­cu­lat­ing on social media and ver­i­fied by Reuters showed sol­diers inside the mosque in Jenin using a micro­phone to read a Jewish prayer in the style of an Islamic call to prayer.

The Palestinian for­eign min­istry con­demned what it said was a mock­ery of the reli­gious sanc­tum. Asked about the events, the Israeli army told reporters the sol­diers were imme­di­ate­ly removed from oper­a­tional activity.

“The behav­iour of the sol­diers in the videos is seri­ous and stands in com­plete oppo­si­tion to the val­ues of the IDF. The sol­diers will be dis­ci­plined accord­ing­ly,” the mil­i­tary said.

HOSPITAL SHOOTING

Soldiers oper­at­ing inside the Khalil Suleiman hos­pi­tal com­pound just out­side Jenin’s built-up refugee camp killed an unarmed teenag­er there, accord­ing to med­ical char­i­ty Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Soldiers shot the 17-year-old in the chest, the Palestinian health min­istry said.

During the raid Israel blocked ambu­lances from enter­ing the camp to trans­port seri­ous­ly ill patients, Mahmoud Al-Saadi, direc­tor of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the north­ern West Bank city, told Reuters.

“The army did not allow us to enter,” despite attempts to coör­di­nate with the International Red Cross and the U.N. Palestinian relief agency, he said, adding sol­diers were also sta­tioned out­side the hospital.

The mil­i­tary did not respond to a request for com­ment about the shoot­ing reports of sol­diers stop­ping ambu­lances reach­ing the sick.

‘LEAVE THE WEST BANK’

Alaa Al Sadi, who lives in the Jenin camp, said sol­diers who came to his home search­ing for guns smashed his tele­vi­sion before tak­ing him blind­fold­ed into deten­tion at an army com­pound out­side the city for about 14 hours, along with hun­dreds of oth­er people.

The sol­diers found no guns but demol­ished his fam­i­ly home and accused him of being a mem­ber of Hamas, telling him he should leave the West Bank and move to Lebanon or Syria, Al Sadi, 44, said in an inter­view. He denied any links to the Gaza-based Islamist mil­i­tant group.

The Israeli mil­i­tary did not respond to a request for com­ment about Alaa Al Sadi’s account.

The major­i­ty of the peo­ple tak­en into deten­tion ear­li­er in the raid have since been released, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, an advo­ca­cy group, said in a state­ment. The Israeli army said 60 want­ed sus­pects were trans­ferred to secu­ri­ty forces for fur­ther questioning.

Most coun­tries deem Jewish set­tle­ments built on land Israel occu­pied in a 1967 Middle East war as ille­gal, and their con­tin­ued expan­sion has for decades been among the most con­tentious issues between Israel, the Palestinians and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. (Reuters)