LAST UPDATE | 9 Aug 2022
AT LEAST 60 Palestinians have been wounded and three were killed in heavy clashes as Israeli troops raided a house in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, two days after deadly fighting in Gaza was halted by a truce.
The Israeli military said a senior militant commander was among the dead.
“Israeli army and special forces are surrounding the house of a wanted man in Nablus. There is exchange of fire,” the army said in a statement.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its medics treated 69 people for gunshot wounds across the Nablus area, at least four of them in critical condition.
Palestinians traded gunfire with the Israeli army in the old city of Nablus, an AFP correspondent reported.
Clashes with the Israeli army also broke out in other parts of Nablus, as Palestinians hurled stones at the troops.
Heavy gunfire was heard from the ongoing clashes, as dozens of Israeli military vehicles brought traffic in one of the West Bank’s largest cities to a standstill.
Israeli security forces have conducted near-daily operations in the West Bank in recent months, focusing on militants from the Islamic Jihad group.
“The terrorist Ibrahim al-Nabulsi was killed in the city of Nablus,” the Israeli army said in a statement, adding that “another terrorist who was staying in the house” also died.
Israeli forces said they launched a shoulder-fired missile at the house and detained four suspects in the raid.
Nabulsi was a commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, one of the main militant groups present in the West Bank operating under the ruling Fatah party.
Following the deadly raid, the militant group said “the response will fit the crime”.
The Palestinian health ministry named those killed as Nabulsi, Islam Sabbouh and Hussein Taha.
Jamal Taha said his 16-year-old son was killed while they were walking to work.
“The army was in the old city. My son went ahead of me to the market, he was carrying his food. There was shooting and four of us were injured,” he told AFP.
On Friday, Israel launched what it called a “pre-emptive” aerial and artillery bombardment of Islamic Jihad positions in the Gaza Strip, leading militants in the coastal enclave to fire more than a thousand rockets in retaliation, according to the army.
An Egypt-brokered ceasefire reached on Sunday ended three days of intense fighting that killed 46 Palestinians, 16 of them children, and wounded 360, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel insists that some of children and other civilians counted in the Palestinian toll were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets that fell short or misfired.
Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid said yesterday that the bombardment had “landed a devastating blow to the enemy”, and that the “entire senior military command of Islamic Jihad in Gaza was successfully targeted.”
Islamic Jihad said 12 of its members had been killed, including commanders Taysir al-Jabari and Khaled Mansour.
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