The Israeli military raided the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, striking the refugee camp with helicopter gunships. The incursion triggered the most ferocious fighting in the occupied territory in years, killing five Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, and wounding more than 90 others, health officials said.
Seven Israeli soldiers were also wounded, the army said.
During nearly 10 hours of fighting, Israeli security forces faced off against Palestinian gunmen with gunfire, armored bulldozers and missile fire from at least one Apache helicopter. Palestinians responded with explosive devices and heavy gunfire.
Witnesses described the Israeli military opening fire indiscriminately at Palestinians just meters from the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, wounding three people. The Israeli military didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the fighting at the hospital gate.
“They were shooting at anything and everything that moved,” hospital director Tawfik al-Shobaki said of the Israeli forces.
It was the first such use of a helicopter gunship in the occupied West Bank since the second Palestinian uprising around two decades ago, Israeli media reported. The Jenin refugee camp, long a militant stronghold, witnessed some of the biggest battles at the time. The Israeli military said the helicopters fired at Palestinian gunmen as security forces tried to extract damaged vehicles from the camp.
Palestinian gunmen targeted Israeli military vehicles with a powerful roadside bomb, disabling five armored vehicles, Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said, adding that fighters’ use of such explosive devices was “very unusual and dramatic."
Israeli troops were trapped inside the mangled vehicles for hours, he said, until the army flooded the camp with troops and heavy vehicles in order to evacuate them.
A freelance journalist, Hazem Nasser, wearing a clearly marked press vest was shot in the abdomen and seriously wounded. He was shot while filming outside a building that came under fire, his colleagues said.
“Of course there was a lot of shooting and explosions, but everyone knew we were journalists covering it,” fellow freelance journalist Alaa Badarneh said. “All of a sudden we were surrounded and the army started shooting toward us.”
An Associated Press journalist at the scene said that he saw the military shoot directly at Nasser. The Israeli military didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the shooting.
Last year, prominent Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while covering an Israeli military raid into the Jenin refugee camp. The army has said Abu Akleh was likely killed by Israeli fire.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified those killed as Khaled Asasa, 21, Qassam Abu Sariya, 29, Qais Jabarin, 21, Ahmed Daraghmeh, 19, and 15-year-old Ahmed Saqr.
The Israeli military said that seven members of the paramilitary border police and the army suffered light and moderate wounds. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to wounded troops in the hospital. He praised the forces and said that Israel was “striking terror with strength and determination."
Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official, accused Israel of waging “a fierce and open war” against the Palestinian people, and said President Mahmoud Abbas would make “unprecedented decisions” in an upcoming emergency meeting.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned what it called Israel’s “continued escalation against the Palestinians,” saying it only further inflamed the situation and undermined efforts to reduce regional tensions.
The escalation was the latest in more than a year of near-daily violence that has wracked the West Bank.
Israel and the Palestinians have been gripped by months of violence, focused mainly in the West Bank, where 124 Palestinians have been killed this year. The city of Jenin has been a hotbed of Palestinian militancy.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state.
Israel has been staging near-nightly raids in the West Bank in response to a spasm of Palestinian violence early last year. Palestinian attacks against Israelis have surged during that time.
Israel says most of the dead were militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.
Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed at least 20 people this year.
