RAMALLAH (Dispatches) –
Zionist troops martyred a 14-year-old Palestinian boy on Monday during a raid in the occupied West Bank that touched off confrontations with residents, medics and witnesses said.
The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the occupying regime stepped up military sweeps in response to a spate of street attacks in its cities last year.
Palestinian medics said the boy was shot dead in Dheisheh refugee camp, near Bethlehem.
Palestinian Wafa news agency, citing the Ministry of Health, identified the martyr as Omar Khaled Khumour.
Palestinian security sources said a large group of Zionist troops stormed the camp on Monday morning, and forced their way into a number of houses there in pursuit of several activists.
They violently ransacked the buildings before taking away some local residents to an unknown location
During the raid, young Palestinian men and teenagers pelted the Zionist troops with stones, who replied by firing live rounds and tear gas canisters.
Medical sources said Khumour was shot in the head and taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
A senior official from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement vehemently censured the increase in violence by the occupying regime’s military, saying Palestinians will never surrender to the aggressors.
“The rise in the number of retaliatory operations in the West Bank explicitly attests to the fact that Palestinians will not accept the status quo,” said Sheikh Nafez Azzam, a member of Islamic Jihad’s political bureau who lives in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, on the desert border with Egypt.
“Residents of the occupied West Bank have always been a source of national pride,” he said. “They will never surrender to the occupying regime’s attempts to change the realities on the ground. The young Palestinian generation conveyed the message to the Zionist regime and the whole world that the Palestinian cause is alive and nothing can undermine it.”
Sheikh Azzam said the Palestinian nation “will neither let their rights forego nor allow desecration of their sanctities, in spite of the Arab world’s feeble position and the international community’s apathy and inaction.”
The senior Islamic Jihad official also reaffirmed that the Palestinian nation will not retreat from its rights, and will continue its struggle.
Meanwhile, China’s foreign minister says the occupying regime must stop “incitements and provocations” against Palestinians, particularly in Al-Quds amid rise in tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Qin Gang said, “We urge the Israeli side to stop incitement and provocations and to avoid [refrain from taking] any unilateral move that may aggravate the situation.”
He made the remarks at a joint press conference with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo.
The United Nations has marked 2022 as the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in 16 years.
Zionist troops killed at least 171 Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Al-Quds last year, including more than 30 children. At least 9,000 others were injured as well.
Qin Gang reiterated that, “China’s President Xi Jinping has recently stressed that the historic oppression the Palestinian people are subjected to should not continue indefinitely and that the Palestinians’ legitimate, national rights should not be compromised.”