Israel kills a Hamas leader in attack on Tulkarem that kills 18
Israeli army claims to have killed A leader of the Palestinian group Hamas In an attack that it launched this Thursday against a refugee camp tulkaremin the occupied West Bank, which killed at least 18 people, according to Palestinian Health Ministry data.
Palestinian News Agency Loyalty It was reported that Israeli planes bombed a cafeteria and 18 people died in the attack.
According to the Israeli military, the bombing, coordinated by the Israeli National Intelligence Service (Shin Bet), identified a Hamas leader in the city of Tulkarem. Zahi Yasser Abdel Razak Aoufi and “other key members” of the group.
“Apart from Aufi, several other important terrorists who were part of the terrorist network in Tulkarm were eliminated,” the army said in the statement.
According to the Palestinian agency, a missile targeted a popular cafe located in Al Hamam street in the Tulkarem refugee camp.
The Israeli military says Oufi was planning to “immediately” carry out a “terrorist operation” inside Israel.
In a statement, the army reported that Oufi had prepared and directed a car bomb attack in the Atara region on 2 September and that he had planned “To carry out several other major terrorist operations.”In the West Bank and inside Israel
Israel has killed 720 Palestinians in the West Bank last year, according to the Health Ministry, including 160 minors.
In Tulkarem alone, at least 94 Palestinians have been killed since January, according to the monitor, including eight minors aged between 15 and 17. EFE.
Most have been killed by soldiers’ gunfire, but more than thirty have been killed in air strikes, a tactic Israel has not used in West Bank cities and refugee camps since the second intifada two decades ago.
Violence has erupted throughout the Israeli-occupied territory since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out last October. Tulkarem and other northern Palestinian cities have been Scene of some of the most horrific incidents of violencePalestinian militant groups are active throughout the northern West Bank, areas where the Palestinian Authority has a limited presence.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said last month that Israeli operations in the West Bank were at times on a scale “not seen in the last two decades”. Volker Turk.
The person in charge of the camp was contacted over phone. Faisal SalamaHe told the news agency AFP that the attack was carried out by a fighter plane F-16.
Alaa Sarozi, a social worker in the area, said the Israeli plane “hit a cafeteria in a four-story building.”
“There are many victims in the hospital,” the resident said, warning that the number of victims was likely to rise.
Palestinian movement FatahThe rival West Bank-based Hamas terror group called for demonstrations Friday in honor of Tulkarm’s “heroic martyrs.”
(With information from EFE, AFP and AP)