AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- An Israeli soldier has been killed while two others have been injured in a shooting attack in the occupied East Al-Quds, the Zionist army said Sunday.
The casualties came Saturday evening in the shooting attack in Shuafat refugee camp checkpoint, Palestine’s Shehab news agency reported.
The shooting involved an armed assailant who approached the checkpoint on foot and opened fire on Zionist troops. The checkpoint was targeted by gunfire from a passing vehicle as well.
The report said the shooting operation killed a female Israeli soldier and injured two others, one of them seriously.
The Zionist military confirmed that the gunman involved in the shooting operation managed to flee the scene.
Following the operation, Israeli forces were deployed to the area, closed the checkpoint and began searching the perimeter.
The occupying regime’s military helicopters also flew over Shuafat camp as troops raided the camp and fired tear gas canisters, resulting in suffocation injuries among Palestinians.
Khedir al-Dibbs, an activist and member of the Shuafat Camp Popular Committee, was quoted by Middle East Eye as saying that life in the camp and surrounding areas has been completely “crippled” by an Israeli shutdown.
Entrances and exits to the camp, which is cut off from the city centre by the occupying regime’s separation wall, have been closed off as Israeli forces began search raids in the area. At least five army vehicles carrying hundreds of soldiers were brought in to the camp, according to Dibbs.
A population of around 100,000 has been “besieged”, Dibbs added, with no one allowed in or out, including medics and workers, and schools have been shut down.
“It has been getting worse by the said. “Things are likely to escalate with this collective punishment being exercised on us by the army.”
Palestinian sources said Israeli forces fired teargas and stun grenades in the camp, raided several homes and made many arrests.
Earlier on Saturday, tensions were high near Damascus Gate outside Al-Quds’ Old City after Israeli forces assaulted Palestinians gathered to mark the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.
At least 17 Palestinians were wounded after Zionist forces used rubber-coated bullets, teargas and stun grenades to disperse the crowds, Palestine Red Crescent Society said. Ten people were hospitalized. At least 22 people were arrested.
Elsewhere, occupying forces martyred two Palestinian teens in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday morning, hours after they martyred two more minors, including a 14-year-old boy, near Qalqilya and Ramallah.
Dibbs said the Israeli occupation is to blame for the escalation in violence and that acts of resistance were a normal response.
“We are part of the Palestinian people. The same thing that is happening in Jenin, Nablus, Al-Khalil, Tulkarm and all the Palestinian areas, is happening in Shuafat.”
Zionist forces had raised the alert level in recent weeks after warnings of possible attacks against Israeli targets amid an escalation in the occupied West Bank.
More than 160 Palestinians have been martyred by Israeli fire this year, including 50 in the Gaza Strip and at least 110 in the West Bank and East Al-Quds. The death toll rate in the West Bank is the highest recorded in a single year since 2015.
Meanwhile, at least three Zionist troops have been killed since May.
The Palestinian movement Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, welcomed the shooting.
“The crimes of the occupation against the Palestinian people and the Al-Aqsa Mosque will not go unanswered,” the group said in a statement.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing associated with the Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack but the shooter is largely thought to have acted without affiliation with any group.