By Raneen Sawafta
JENIN, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed two Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank early on Wednesday, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, bringing to five the number of Palestinians killed in different incidents within several hours.
Yousef Nimer, a witness, said Israeli forces began firing at people he was sitting with outside a hospital in the city of Jenin as they were finishing Suhur, the final meal before sunrise during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
“I told them, look, there is something coming towards us. We ran away, then a sniper started to shoot at us. Some crawled and some ran away. The people who ran away got injured and those who crawled were saved,” said Nimer, who was wounded in the incident and pointed to a hole he said had been made by a bullet in one of the hospital’s walls.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, Israeli police said an armed civilian guard shot and “neutralised” a suspect in a stabbing attack at a military checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
The condition of the suspect, whom police identified as a 15-year-old Palestinian, was not immediately clear. Israel’s ambulance service said two security personnel who sustained mild to moderate stab wounds had been taken to hospital.
Israeli forces shot dead a 13-year-old Palestinian from a refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Tuesday night, and killed two others at a checkpoint, Israeli police said.
The police said the boy was shot after aiming fireworks at forces stationed in an observation post.
In the checkpoint incident, the police said five people were seen igniting explosives and intending to hurl them at the road, prompting Israeli forces to open fire and arrest the suspects. It did not confirm any deaths and said there were no casualties among its ranks.
Israel has stepped up raids in the West Bank since the Gaza war began in October. United Nations’ records show at least 358 people in the Palestinian territory have been killed since Oct. 7, a quarter of them children.
The war was triggered by an attack on southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7 in which the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 253, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s air and ground assault on blockaded Gaza has killed more than 31,000 people and wounded over 71,500, according to Gaza health authorities.
The offensive has flattened much of Gaza and displaced most of its 2.3 million population, one-quarter of whom the U.N. says are a step away from famine. South Africa has accused Israel of state-led genocide at the World Court, which Israel denies.
(Reporting by Raneen Sawafta and Henriette Chacar; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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