West Bank (Dispatches) – Zionist troops martyred three Palestinian fighters Monday in a raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
In a statement, the Palestinian health ministry identified the three men killed in Balata camp in Nablus as Muhammad Abu Zaytoun, 32, Fathi Abu Rizk, 30, and Abdullah Abu Hamdan, 24.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, said in a statement that the three were among the group’s fighters.
The group’s emblem was wrapped around the foreheads of the men in a morgue, and their bodies shrouded in the Palestinian flag.
Palestinian presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh described the killings as a “veritable massacre” and charged that repeated Zionist raids and attacks by settlers constituted a “major war crime and a collective punishment”.
He said silence from the United States had emboldened Zionists to escalate attacks, calling on Washington to “immediately intervene to stop the Israeli madness that will drag the region toward explosion”.
The Zionist regime has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and its forces regularly launch incursions into Palestinian cities, which are nominally under the control of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.
Deadly raids have surged in recent months across the Palestinian territory.
Muhammad Zuhd, an activists from the camp, said “violent clashes took place between resistance fighters and the Israeli army” after hundreds of soldiers entered Balata.
Mourners gathered in the streets as the men’s bodies were carried in a funeral procession.
Samer Thouqan, from Fatah, said residents “were surprised by an extreme, barbaric attack”.
“They (Zionist troops) started shooting from all sides and destroyed many homes in this camp,” he said.
Following the raid, Palestinians inspected the rubble of a damaged building and salvaged belongings.
Over the past months, the occupying regime has ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and cities throughout the occupied territories. As a result of these attacks, dozens of Palestinians have lost their lives and many others have been arrested.
Most of the raids have targeted the cities of Nablus and Jenin in the occupied West Bank, where the regime’s forces have been trying to stifle a growing Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
One of the goals of Zionist raids on various locations across the West Bank has been to raze the structures that belong to the Palestinians, whom the regime accuses of killing settlers.
Batala was also raided earlier in May, during which Zionist troops killed two young Palestinians and wounded at least seven others.
So far this year, the regime’s forces have killed scores of Palestinians across the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip.