An Israeli air strike on a West Bank cafe wipes out entire family
As bulldozers worked to remove the rubble, stunned Palestinians watched in silence.
Others searched in the debris for what was here only a few hours ago. A man dusted children’s textbooks; another found a bloodstained mattress.
This was the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, leaving a scene reminiscent of the daily destruction inflicted in Gaza.
For the first time in more than 20 years, Israeli fighter jets bombed a West Bank city on Thursday night.
A cafe, where young men were gathered for shisha and food, was struck, alongside the residential apartment next door.
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Eighteen people were killed and many others wounded, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Among those killed was the small family of Mohamed Abu Zahra, his wife Saja Karoush and their two young children, Karam and Sham Abu Zahra.
“An entire family was wiped out,” said Nimr Fayed, the targeted cafe’s owner.
“What did they do wrong? The children were torn to pieces.”
Israel killed these two children, Karam and Sham Abu Zahra, along with their mother and father, in yesterday night’s airstrike on a cafe in Tulkarem refugee camp, occupied West Bank, that killed 18 people. pic.twitter.com/4wR25wdLD0
— Zena Tahhan (@zenatahhan) October 4, 2024
Fayed, who lost his brother in the attack, was in a nearby building when the Israeli missile hit his cafe.
It was a normal night, he told Middle East Eye, with people gathered to eat and smoke as usual.
Within seconds, the bombing changed the scene completely, he added.
“There were bodies strewn on the fences, the utility poles, the roads and under the rubble,” he recalled.
“It was a bloody scene that reflects the savagery and Nazism of this occupation. They attack civilians and people of all backgrounds.”
The attack on the Tulkarm refugee camp, a densely populated area repeatedly raided by Israeli troops, marks the latest Israeli escalation against Palestinians in the West Bank.
'It was a bloody scene that reflects the savagery and Nazism of this occupation'
- Nimr Fayed, targeted cafe's owner
At least 410 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the West Bank this year, including over 100 children.
Nearly 100 were killed in Tulkarm alone, according to UN figures.
Despite the repeated assaults, the shock and grief in the northern West Bank city on Friday, residents remain steadfast, Fayed said.
“We will replace each martyr with 10 new babies. May God give us victory. This occupation’s end is certain.”
'I’ve never seen anything like this'
Over the past two years, the Israeli military increasingly deployed combat helicopters and drones to bomb Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the West Bank, alongside routinely raiding them with large forces.
However, the Thursday attack was the first time fighter jets were used in the occupied territory since the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
Unfamiliar with a bombardment of this scale, the Thursday strike shocked many in Tulkarm.
“I heard sounds in the sky and at first thought it may have been Iranian missiles,” Abdallah Kanaan, a survivor of the attack, told MEE.
He was sitting a few metres away from the cafe that was targeted.
“All of a sudden the strike hit the building and blew it up,” Kanaan recalled.
“I fell off my seat and all the shattered glass and rocks fell on us.”
Immediately after the strike, ambulances rushed to the area as people scrambled to transport the wounded.
Kanaan, who was injured, said he couldn’t breathe or walk. He was eventually rescued by his nephew, who pulled him from the ground.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the elderly man said.
“Everything in the building blew up. I saw nothing but black smoke and fire.”
The attack was widely condemned by Palestinian parties as a “massacre” that marks the latest escalation by Israel against the Palestinian people.
“We condemn the Tulkarm camp massacre and hold the occupation government fully responsible for its repercussions,” the Palestinian Authority’s presidency office said.
The Israeli military confirmed carrying out the strike on Thursday, saying it eliminated the head of Hamas’s “network” in Tulkarm alongside other “significant terrorists”.
There was no mention of the at least two children killed in the strike in the Israeli statement.
The strike came as the military continued to pound Gaza and Lebanon, killing dozens of people on a daily basis for nearly a year.
Since 7 October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 42,500 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and nearly 2,000 people in Lebanon.
More than 100,000 people have been wounded overall.
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