UPDATE - 2 Palestinians wounded by Israeli army gunfire in West Bank

MORE DETAILS, BACKGROUND

By Aysar Alais and Mohammad Sio

RAMALLAH, Palestine / ISTANBUL (AA) - Two Palestinians were wounded by Israeli army gunfire late Thursday during a raid in the town of Kafr Aqab, north of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

A statement said teams “treated two people wounded by live bullets, one below the knee and another, a 17-year-old boy, in the foot, during an Israeli military raid in Kafr Aqab.”

Israeli police and army forces stormed the town, chased several youths, and fired live rounds and stun grenades, witnesses told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The army is said to have closed several roads during the raid and restricted the movement of residents and vehicles.

The incident came hours after Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, in the northern West Bank. Earlier Thursday, a Palestinian child was also killed by Israeli fire while playing football in the village of Ar-Rihiya, south of Hebron.

Separately, illegal Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in the central and northern West Bank on Friday, wounding four people.

Farmers in the towns of Salem, Urif, Hawara, Qusra, Aqraba, and Qabalan, south and east of Nablus in the northern West Bank, were assaulted, forcibly removed from their fields, and prevented from harvesting olives, the sources reported.

Illegal settlers reportedly beat a Palestinian family in Qabalan while they were harvesting olives, injuring four family members, the sources said.

The attackers also damaged Palestinian vehicles, and the Israeli army fired live rounds while intervening to protect the illegal settlers.

In the towns of Turmus Ayya and Abu Falah, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank, witnesses told Anadolu that illegal settlers attacked farmers and set fire to their fields.

The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, which leads popular campaigns with international volunteers, described this year’s harvest as “the most dangerous in decades,” saying farmers face daily assaults with no protection.

According to the commission, attacks by illegal Israeli settlers and the army have uprooted, broken, or damaged 48,728 trees, including 37,237 olive trees.

It said illegal settlers carried out 7,154 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank during the two years of the war, resulting in the deaths of 33 Palestinians and the displacement of 33 Bedouin communities.

Local authorities say more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, around 10,000 wounded, and over 20,000 arrested, including 1,600 children, since the Gaza war in October 2023.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.