Palestinian roadside bomb injures 4 Israeli forces in Nablus

Palestinian resistance fighters have set off an explosive device in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, injuring four invading Israeli soldiers.

The Nablus battalion of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement, said in a statement that its members had carried out “a precise ambush on an occupation ground force” near Joseph’s Tomb compound on Wednesday night.

The Israeli forces had raided Nablus to escort the entry of hundreds of settlers to Joseph’s Tomb compound. 

Videos and images circulated online showed a large column of smoke rising after the blast.

The Israeli military said an officer and three soldiers were wounded as they walked past the explosive device when it went off. 

A spokesman for the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement, Muhammad Hamada, said the “detonation of a bomb in the face of [Israeli] occupation forces in Nablus this evening is a resounding message to the extremist occupation [regime] that you have no security on any inch of our land, and you have no choice but to leave.”

Violence has surged across the occupied West Bank over the past year and a half, with a rise in near-nightly raids by the Israeli army and attacks by extremist settlers as well as an uptick in Palestinian retaliatory operations.

At least 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the year.