(Ramallah) Four Palestinians, including a teenager, were killed by Israeli gunfire on Thursday in Jenin, a Palestinian town in the northern occupied West Bank where the Israeli army entered in the afternoon, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry .
Eighteen people with gunshot wounds were also hospitalized, four of them in serious condition, said the ministry, which identified three of the four dead as Omar Awadin, 16, Nidal Khazim, 28, and Youssef Chrim. 29 years.
“The [Israeli] security forces are currently operating in the Jenin [Palestinian refugee] camp,” the army said in a statement released around 3:40 p.m. (9:40 a.m. Eastern Time), without further details.
This new tragedy comes as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be sucked into a new inextricable spiral of violence since the entry into office at the end of December of one of the most right-wing governments in the history of Israel, under the leadership of the first Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 84 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians, including minors), 12 civilians (including three minors) and one Israeli policeman, as well than a Ukrainian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
Israeli forces are concentrating their operations in the northern West Bank, a stronghold of armed groups in this Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.