Five Palestinians killed as fierce fighting erupts in West Bank city of Jenin
The Israeli military has raided the West Bank city of Jenin, triggering the fiercest fighting in the occupied territory in years and killing five Palestinians including a 15-year-old boy, health officials said.
More than 90 others were wounded, and the Israeli army said seven soldiers were also injured.
During nearly 10 hours of fighting, Israeli security forces faced off against Palestinian militants with gunfire, armoured bulldozers and missile fire from at least one Apache helicopter. Palestinians responded with explosive devices and heavy gunfire.
Witnesses described the Israeli military opening fire indiscriminately at Palestinians metres from the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, wounding three people.
“They were shooting at anything and everything that moved,” hospital director Tawfik al-Shobaki said.
It was the first such use of a helicopter gunship in the occupied West Bank since the second Palestinian uprising around two decades ago, Israeli media reported. The Jenin refugee camp, long a militant stronghold, witnessed some of the biggest battles at the time.
The Israeli military said the helicopters fired at Palestinian gunmen as security forces tried to extract damaged vehicles from the camp.
Palestinian militants targeted Israeli military vehicles with a powerful roadside bomb, disabling five armoured vehicles, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said, adding that militants’ use of such explosive devices was “very unusual and dramatic”.
Israeli troops were trapped inside the mangled vehicles for hours, he said, until the army flooded the camp with troops and heavy vehicles to evacuate them.
A freelance journalist, Hazem Nasser, wearing a clearly marked press vest was shot in the abdomen and seriously wounded while filming outside a building that came under fire, his colleagues said.
“Of course there was a lot of shooting and explosions, but everyone knew we were journalists covering it,” fellow freelance journalist Alaa Badarneh said. “All of a sudden we were surrounded and the army started shooting toward us.”
An Associated Press journalist at the scene said that he saw the military shoot directly at Mr Nasser.
Last year, prominent Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while covering an Israeli military raid into the Jenin refugee camp. The army said she was likely to have been killed by Israeli fire.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified those killed as Khaled Asasa, 21, Qassam Abu Sariya, 29, Qais Jabarin, 21, Ahmed Daraghmeh, 19, and 15-year-old Ahmed Saqr.
The Israeli military said seven members of the paramilitary border police and the army suffered light and moderate wounds. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to wounded troops in hospital, praising the forces and saying Israel was “striking terror with strength and determination”.
Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official, accused Israel of waging “a fierce and open war” against the Palestinian people, and said President Mahmoud Abbas would make “unprecedented decisions” in an upcoming emergency meeting.
