Death toll rises in ‘israel’s’ latest killing spree in occupied West Bank

The latest fatality, named 24-year-old Abdel Jawad Hamdan Saleh, was caused on Friday during a demonstration against Israel’s illegal settlements in the village of Umm Safa north of the city of Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry announced.

The Israeli army said the protesters had begun throwing rocks at its forces, who “responded with riot dispersal means and live fire.”

Earlier in the day, two Palestinians had been killed during an Israeli raid on the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

The Palestinian health ministry announced “two martyrs and three injured as a result of the occupation aggression on Nablus,” identifying the fatalities as Khairi Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Maqbul, 32.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the second-largest component of the Palestine Liberation Organization umbrella group after the Fatah Party, described the fatalities as members of its armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades.

A few days earlier, Tel Aviv deployed more than 1,000 of its military forces to Jenin as means of supposedly damaging the resistance “infrastructure” in the city and the refugee camp that it hosts. At least 13 Palestinians died and more than 100 others were wounded as a result of the conflict.

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters in New York that “there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces.”

A day earlier, a group of United Nations experts had ruled that Israel’s military campaign against Jenin might constitute a “war crime.”