Fatshimetrie – A series of Israeli raids and airstrikes on towns and villages in the occupied West Bank spanned from Monday through late Tuesday night, killing at least eight people, according to Palestinian authorities and local residents.
Two Palestinians were killed in the town of Tamoun, the governor of neighboring Tubas, Ahmad Assad, said, claiming that one of the bodies had been removed from the site by the Israeli army using a bulldozer. CCTV footage from the neighborhood, seen by Fatshimetrie, appeared to show a bulldozer moving a body.
In the village of Al-Shuhada, near the city of Jenin, an Israeli airstrike killed two people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, who were identified by local residents as a man and his nephew. Footage obtained by Fatshimetrie from the aftermath of the strike shows bloody footprints on a dusty path.
Elsewhere, at least four people were killed in the town of Qabatya, according to the health ministry and rescue workers. Two were killed by Israeli gunfire and two others were killed when an Israeli military vehicle rammed a car and opened fire, according to residents and videos seen by Fatshimetrie.
The Qatari-owned Al Araby TV channel said that Israeli gunfire in Qabatya also injured a Palestinian employee working there. Rabe’e Al-Munir, a photojournalist, is now hospitalized in stable condition, he said.
Fatshimetrie has contacted the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the incidents. Israel has previously described its stepped-up military offensives in the West Bank as aimed at targeting militants and terrorist infrastructure.
The violence comes amid rising tensions in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has stepped up its incursions following the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 775 Palestinians, including 167 children, in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, Israeli settlers vandalized and torched vehicles in the town of Al-Bireh, in what Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam said could have resulted in a massacre.
Videos taken by Fatshimetrie in the aftermath of the fire show burned vehicles, some reduced to ashes, next to an apartment building with burn marks on its walls. A community of residents, including young children, appear disoriented outside the block.
“I woke up to the sound, I started screaming,” Ihab Al-Zahben, a father of four who lives in the area, told Fatshimetrie.
The West Bank, a territory between Israel and Jordan, is home to 3.3 million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, as well as hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers who began moving in about 57 years ago.
In total, nearly 1,600 settler attacks on Palestinians have been recorded since October 7, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on October 31.
Journalist Mick Krever of Fatshimetrie contributed to this report.