A Palestinian teenager was shot dead in an Israeli military attack in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority said, with the army claiming to have shot dead a “suspect” who approached “with explosives.”
Mahmoud Majid Mohammed al-Aïdi, 17, died in the Palestinian refugee camp Al-Fara, north-east of the city of Nablus, from his wounds “from the firing of occupation bullets (Israel, editor’s note) in the head”. The Palestinian Ministry of Health wrote in a statement.
For its part, the Israeli army said it shot dead a suspect during an “anti-terrorist operation” conducted along with several other night operations in the West Bank, during which it says it arrested 23 people.
“During an operation in Al-Fara camp, a Palestinian suspect with explosives approached the soldiers. The soldiers responded by firing live ammunition” and hitting one person, an army statement added.
Assem Mansour, one of the camp officials, told AFP that “after midnight, the Israeli army entered the camp through various entrances and surrounded a house to look for a suspect.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The Israeli army has increased operations in the Jenin and Nablus areas, strongholds of armed Palestinian factions, in the northern West Bank since a wave of anti-Israeli attacks in March and April 2022.
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 48 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians, including minors), nine civilians (including three minors), as well as an Israeli police officer and a Ukrainian, according to an AFP tally of Israeli officials and Palestinian sources.
The Palestinian Health Ministry also announced on Tuesday the death of a 25-year-old Palestinian man, Haroun Rasmi Youssouf Abu Aram, who died two years earlier in the southern West Bank from wounds inflicted by Israeli bullets.