NABLUS (Dispatches) – A large contingent of Zionist troops accompanied by a military bulldozer raided the Balata refugee camp, forced families to evacuate a residential building and then blew it up at about 3am on Wednesday.
The incident overnight was among several raids by Zionist troops in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
The raids left one Palestinian man seriously injured and destroyed the Fatah party’s offices in Balata, in addition to the apartment building owned by Raed Shallal, the Palestinian Red Crescent and officials said.
“We were forcibly evicted, and we could not take anything out of the house, even ID cards and school bags,” Shallal, a 40-year-old father of seven, said. “We are now homeless, my wife and our children, the oldest is 12 and the youngest, a year and a half old.”
Also in Shallal’s destroyed building was the family home of a Palestinian man wanted by Zionist troops.
More than 80 Palestinians suffered from tear gas inhalation during the raids, the Red Crescent said.
Earlier, Zionist troops fired tear gas canisters at Palestinians in the eastern part of the city where they were providing cover for Zionist settlers who had stormed Joseph’s Tomb, a shrine located within an area controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
Settlers frequently storm Nablus to perform prayers at the shrine under the guard of the Zionist regime’s army, believing that it is the tomb of the Prophet Joseph, while Palestinians say the tomb is only 200 years old and a Muslim man called Yousef Dweikat lived there.
One man, Mohammed Leila, was shot five times in the chest and twice in the legs near the tomb and was seriously wounded. He was transferred to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, Ahmed Jibril, the director of the Emergency and Ambulance Center at the Red Crescent, said.
In a separate incident, another Palestinian was shot in his car by the Huwara checkpoint after allegedly firing at soldiers there, but Zionist troops prevented ambulance crews from reaching him and arrested him instead.
“Our medics were attacked and prevented from providing first aid to the injured man in his car,” Jibril told Al Jazeera. “He was kidnapped by the soldiers and taken to an unknown destination.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh reiterated that the Zionist regime’s “terror machine” continues to commit atrocities against Palestinians with impunity.
He made the remarks in a statement released on Tuesday after the killing of two young Palestinian men during a violent raid by Zionist troops at Aqabat Jaber refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Ariha.
“The Israeli terror machine does not stop committing more crimes” as the regime’s military and political officials “openly talk about” the killing of the Palestinian people, Shtayyeh said.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas vowed revenge against Zionist regime after the martyrdom of the two young Palestinian men.