Israeli army claims to have killed Islamic Jihad leader in West Bank

While the war has already been going on for a year in the Gaza Strip, the IDF claims to have targeted a senior enemy official in another theater of conflict, in the West Bank. The Israeli army announced on Friday that it had killed the leader of the Islamic Jihad of the Nour Shams Palestinian refugee camp in Tulkarem, in the north of this territory occupied by Israel since 1967, the day before.

“A plane struck the Tulkarem area and eliminated Mohammed Abdullah, leader of the Islamic Jihad terrorist network in Nour Shams,” the army said in a statement, which also claimed to have killed another fighter. According to her, Abdullah was the successor of Mohammed Jaber, known as “Abou Choujaa”, killed on August 29 in an Israeli raid against the Nour Shams camp.

“Involved in numerous attacks in the region”

Islamic Jihad, an Islamist movement with strong roots in the refugee camps in the northern West Bank and an ally of Hamas, did not immediately confirm. The Israeli army accuses Mohammed Abdullah of having been in recent months “in charge of the terrorist network in the camp” and of being “involved in numerous attacks in the region”, according to a statement published on Telegram.

More than 13,000 Palestinians are crammed into a fifth of a square kilometer in the Nour Chams refugee camp, opened in 1952 to accommodate Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee villages around Haifa, on the coast, in the creation of Israel four years earlier. According to the UN which manages it, it is one of the 19 camps in the West Bank most affected by health problems.

Israel claims to have killed twelve “terrorists” on Thursday

The Israeli army claimed on Saturday to have killed 12 “terrorists” members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a strike already Thursday in Tulkarem, on the city’s refugee camp, while the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported 18 dead. “The Army and Air Force carried out a joint operation to strike terrorists who were planning to carry out a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians in the near future,” she charged.

This strike was the deadliest since 2000 in the West Bank, said a source within the Palestinian security services. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned an “illegal airstrike” on Friday, saying it was “another clear example of the systematic use of lethal force by security forces Israeli operations in the West Bank, often unnecessary, disproportionate and therefore illegal.

“The destruction of an entire building full of people by an aerial bombardment demonstrates Israel’s blatant disregard for its obligations,” he added, stressing that he had requested an independent investigation into this operation.

Tulkarem had already been targeted at the end of August by Israeli air and ground raids as part of a large-scale offensive against armed groups fighting against Israel in several towns and Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

Since the start of the war on October 7 in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli army and Hamas, triggered by the unprecedented attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel, the deadly violence between the Palestinians and the army and the settlers Israeli forces have continued to intensify in the West Bank.