RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – Zionist troops shot dead two Palestinians during a military raid in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. A local resistance movement said they were resistance fighters.
The deadly raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarem was the latest in Zionist violence that has surged since last year.
The ministry and Tulkarem’s branch of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a resistance movement with connections to President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, identified the pair as Samer El Shafei and Hamza Kharyoush, both aged 22 years.
Videos circulated on social media purportedly showed the lifeless bodies of the two gunmen lying on a tin roof as what appear to be Zionist troops searched them. At one point, one of the members of the Zionist troops tried to flip one body as he partially took off the dead man’s jeans.
Palestinian media, citing witnesses, said soldiers left after ensuring the two were dead.
The deaths raised to 104 the number of Palestinians killed by Zionist troops in the West Bank and east Al-Quds since the start of the year.
Meanwhile, the Zionist regime’s army on Friday handed over the bodies of three Palestinians who were killed by regime troops more than 50 days ago to the Palestinian side, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement.
In coordination with the Palestinian liaison office of security coordination with the occupying regime, the Zionist army handed the bodies over to the Palestinian side at an army checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, the statement adds.
The Palestinian WAFA news agency identified the martyrs as Odai Shami, Jihad Shami, and Mohammad Dabik, who were killed by Zionist troops on March 12 while they were in a car close to the regime’s military checkpoint of Sarra near Nablus. Their bodies were taken away by the Zionist troops ever since.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has warned that the continuation of the recent escalation in the occupying regime’s daily crimes against Palestinians could have dire consequences for the entire region.
Nabil Abu Rudainah, a spokesman for the PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas, issued the warning after the regime’s forces gunned down four Palestinians, including a woman, during two separate bouts of aggression in Tel Aviv-occupied West Bank on Thursday.
“Continuation of [the regime’s] raids on Palestinian cities and [its] daily atrocities against the Palestinian nation...would lead the situation in the region to explode and reach an uncontrollable stage,” the PA official said.
Abu Rudainah considered the occupying regime to be fully responsible for the intensification of violence against the Palestinians, urging the United States -- Tel Aviv’s biggest and most dedicated ally -- to step in to immediately stop the regime’s aggression.