WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday that Zionist troops martyred a Palestinian teenager in an army raid in the occupied West Bank.
He was the latest casualty in what is already one of the most violent periods in the West Bank in recent years.
The ministry said 17-year-old Hamza al-Ashqar died of a gunshot wound to the head in the West Bank city of Nablus, but provided no additional details about the incident.
Zionist special forces raided the eastern sector of Nablus, located approximately 49 kilometers (30 miles) north of Al-Quds, early on Monday and carried out arrests. They clashed with Palestinian youths and fighters during the raid.
Palestinian media outlets, citing local sources, reported that Zionist troops arrested three people who were recently released from prison after they broke into their homes in the area.
The sources added that Ashqar was critically wounded in the head by the occupation forces’ bullets during the aggression on Nablus. He was transported to Rafidia Surgical Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
On Sunday, Zionist troops shot dead at least five Palestinian men during a large-scale raid on the Aqabet Jabr refugee camp – which has been under a siege for more than a week – near Ariha.
The regime’s military claimed in a statement that the fatalities included two men responsible for an attempted shooting attack in the city on January 28.
The army said it withheld the bodies of the men killed, including those it claimed were members of a cell affiliated with the Hamas resistance movement in Ariha.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem later stated that the “massacre” committed by the army in Ariha would “fuel a revolution” among Palestinians.
“The continuous killings confirm the Israeli occupation’s great confusion in dealing with the escalation and expansion of resistance in all of the cities, camps and villages of the West Bank, and its inability to stop its escalation,” Qassem said.
The Arab League has condemned the Zionist regime over waging “an open war” and perpetrating “organized crimes” against the Palestinian nation, especially after the Zionist troops’ bloodshed on Monday.
The Assistant Secretary General for Palestine and the Occupied Arab Territories in the regional organization, Saeed Abu Ali, said in a statement on Monday that the new appalling crime comes amidst the absence of an effective international stance, and the international community’s silence and apathy toward rising Zionist violence across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Abu Ali held the far-right Zionist cabinet led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully responsible for the bloody assault on the Aqabet Jabr refugee camp – which has been under siege for more than a week.