AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s army closed areas near the Gaza Strip to civilians Tuesday, citing a risk of retaliation, following the overnight arrest of two senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad members and killing a Palestinian teenager, Palestinian sources said.
A 17-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Zionist troops during a late Monday raid in the flashpoint West Bank district of Jenin. The army said it had operated alongside police.
A Palestinian security source, who requested anonymity, told AFP that one of those arrested was Bassem al-Saadi, a senior figure in Islamic Jihad’s political wing in the West Bank.
The source identified the second person detained as Saadi’s son-in-law, a Jenin-based fundraiser for militant group.
Identified as Dirar al-Kafrini, the Palestinian health ministry said the teenage boy was rushed to the Jenin Public Hospital in critical condition, where he succumbed to his wounds inflicted by live ammunition fired by Zionist troops.
The hospital authorities were quoted as saying that the bullets hit him in the shoulder, penetrating his chest, which caused his immediate death.
A funeral procession for al-Kafrini took place on the streets of the Jenin camp shortly after the killing.
According to the Palestinian Al-Wafa New Agency, another person was injured after being hit in the foot and was taken to the Ibn Sina Hospital.
The health ministry said he was shot with live ammunition in the leg and was hospitalized.
During the raid in the flashpoint Northern West Bank refugee camp, Zionist troops opened indiscriminate gunfire, and fired tear gas and concussion grenades toward local people and civilian houses, reports said.
It came amid reports that undercover Zionist troops detained 18 Palestinians in multiple West Bank raids by sneaking their way from several directions supported by a military bulldozer on the ground and helicopter in the air.
The undercover unit leading tracking dogs showed up at the house of Saadi, a 62-year-old former prisoner, muscled inside, and re-arrested him along with his son-in-law Ashraf al-Jada.
Saadi’s wife was injured and local media showed traces of blood on the floor of his home after the Zionist troops withdrew.
The troops also clashed with Palestinians after storming the city of Jenin, detaining a university lecturer, a former member of Nablus Municipality, and a pharmacist in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
In a statement on Monday night, the Palestinian resistance movement Islamic Jihad’s armed wing Al-Quds Brigades, announced “a state of alertness and readiness among its fighters and active combat units” which it said comes “in response to its duty towards the treacherous aggression that the great leader, the sheikh Bassam al-Saadi and his family were exposed to in Jenin”.