By According to Palestinian authorities, as reported by Reuters, Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, while an ambulance driver died as he went to pick up wounded from a separate attack by violent Jewish settlers.
The Israeli military began an extended raid in the early hours of Friday in the Nur Shams area, near the flashpoint Palestinian city of Tulkarm, with exchanges of fire with armed fighters continuing well into Saturday.
At least three drones hovered above Nur Shams, an area housing refugees and their descendants from the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel, as Israeli military vehicles massed and bursts of gunfire echoed.
The Tulkarm Brigades, a group comprised of forces from numerous Palestinian factions, stated that their fighters engaged in exchanges of fire with Israeli forces on Saturday.
Since Israel seized it in the 1967 Middle East war, the West Bank, a kidney-shaped area about 100 km (60 miles) long and 50 km wide, has been at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The ongoing Gaza war has overshadowed the continuing violence in the territory, which includes regular army raids on militant groups, rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages, and street attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.
Palestinian health authorities reported that among the 14 Palestinians killed during the raid, one of the heaviest casualty totals in the West Bank in months was a gunman and a 16-year-old boy. Another man was killed on Friday.
The Israeli military stated that a number of militants were killed or arrested during the raid, and at least four soldiers were wounded in exchange for fire.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli gunfire killed a 50-year-old ambulance driver in a separate incident near the village of Al-Sawiya, south of the city of Nablus, as he was on his way to transport injured people following an attack on the village.
Credit: Reuters
