Israel-Palestine war: Five Palestinians killed in West Bank air strike
Five Palestinian fighters were killed early on Saturday in an Israeli air strike on the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli army has conducted repeated wide-scale raids in the West Bank since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October.
The drone strike on the Balata camp, home to 24,000 people, targeted the headquarters of the Fatah party. Two people were critically wounded in the attack, which had also caused widescale destruction, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Fatah sources told AFP that the people killed were members of the party, which leads the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military said the strike killed Mohammad Zahed who, it alleges, was involved in a shooting that wounded two Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in April.
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After the strike, Israeli forces stormed the camp and destroyed an empty house without causing further casualties.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, a large contingent of Israeli forces and bulldozers, backed by drones, stormed Tubas city overnight, and positioned snipers on the roofs of a number of buildings.
One Palestinian, identified as Omar al-Shahrouri, and two others were killed in ensuing confrontations between troops and the city's residents.
Jenin had so far been the only location in the West Bank to be targeted with air strikes since the war on Gaza before the attack on the Balata camp.
On Friday, two Palestinians were killed in a drone strike on the Jenin refugee camp, as part of a raid on the city.
Meanwhile, a 21-year-old Palestinian, Jamal Masharqa, on Saturday succumbed to wounds sustained in a raid on the city on 9 November, raising the death toll from the attack to 12 people.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces and settler violence since 7 October.
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