The Israeli military on Sunday launched air raids on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, unleashing an attack that involved a missile and killing at least three Palestinians, according to residents and officials.
Residents around the area revealed that Israel carried out at least 10 air attacks in Jenin in the early hours of Monday, sending smoke billowing from the wreckage of buildings, and reported spotting a convoy of Israeli armoured vehicles moving towards the city’s vast refugee camp.
‘There is bombing from the air and an invasion from the ground,’ Mahmoud al-Saadi, the director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, told reporters.
‘Several houses and sites have been bombed…. smoke is rising from everywhere.’
The Palestinian health ministry said the raids killed at least three people and wounded 13, several of whom were in critical condition.
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‘What is going on in the refugee camp is real war,’ Khaled Alahmad, a Palestinian ambulance driver, told reporters.
‘There were strikes from the sky targeting the camp, every time we drive in around five to seven ambulances and we come back full with injured people.’
In a separate incident, a 21-year-old Palestinian was also killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, according to officials.
The attacks on Monday came amid escalating violence in the West Bank, including the first Israeli drone assault in the area since 2006, increasing military raids on Jenin and northern Palestinian territories, and settler attacks in Palestinian villages.
Africa Today News, New York reports that no fewer than three Palestinians were killed in the Israeli drone attack on June 21, while seven were killed and more than 100 wounded in a raid that involved helicopter gunships over Jenin on June 19. Palestinian gunmen also killed four Israelis on June 20, while at least one Palestinian man was shot dead the next day as Israeli settlers stormed Trumus Ayya and set fire to dozens of cars and homes.
Following Monday’s attack, the Israeli military said in a statement that it struck a “joint operations centre”, which served as a command centre for the Jenin Brigades, a unit comprised of fighters from different Palestinian armed groups.