Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Gunman in West Bank Clash

People inspect the site where three Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces near the West Bank city of Jenin, 06 August 2023. (EPA)
People inspect the site where three Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces near the West Bank city of Jenin, 06 August 2023. (EPA)
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Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Gunman in West Bank Clash

People inspect the site where three Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces near the West Bank city of Jenin, 06 August 2023. (EPA)
People inspect the site where three Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces near the West Bank city of Jenin, 06 August 2023. (EPA)

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian gunman during clashes that followed a military arrest raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Islamic Jihad armed group said. 

The Israeli military said its forces came under fire from suspects who threw explosives at soldiers in the confrontations near the flashpoint city of Jenin and that the soldiers "responded with live fire and identified a hit." 

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death of a 17-year-old there. Islamic Jihad said he was a member of the group and gave his age as 18. 

In the Palestinian city Hebron, Israeli security forces arrested two Palestinians who they said had carried out a drive-by shooting that killed an Israeli woman on Monday while a search for another gunman who killed two Israelis in the village Huwara further north on Saturday was still going on. 

The military said it arrested a total of 32 Palestinian suspects overnight between Monday and Tuesday. 

Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months with frequent Israeli raids, Palestinian street attacks and retribution assaults by Jewish settlers. 

Prospects of reviving US-brokered peace talks that aimed to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, remain dim almost a decade after their collapse. 

Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and has since built dozens of settlements there that are considered illegal by most countries, a view Israel disputes, with its military in control of more than half the territory. 

The Palestinians have limited self-rule in the West Bank and remain split between a Western-backed administration and armed Hamas movement that rejects coexistence with Israel, while many in Israel's current government reject Palestinian statehood.  



Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes 'Cruelty'

A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes 'Cruelty'

A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican's various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza, Reuters reported.

"Yesterday, children were bombed," said the pope. "This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart."

The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel's military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that "what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope's remarks amounted to a "trivialization" of the term genocide.

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.

The patriarch's office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope's remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.