TULKAREM: Israeli forces killed nine Palestinian civilians in separate air strikes in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian press agency Wafa reported.
The first strike, carried out by an Israeli drone in the Tulkarem area, killed five Palestinian civilians. Wafa reported that the drone fired two missiles at a vehicle near the village of Zeita, which subsequently caught fire. The director of the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarem confirmed that “five martyrs” had been brought to the facility following the drone strike.
A witness, identified as Nasser, described the scene to AFP: “I live less than 50 meters from here. We came after hearing an explosion and saw a vehicle on fire on the road towards Zeita. Next to it, we saw a body lying on the road. Inside the vehicle, there were three charred bodies, completely burnt.”
The area was quickly sealed off by Israeli forces following the strike.
In a subsequent air strike later in the day, also in the Tulkarem area, four more Palestinian civilians were killed. The Israeli military confirmed the strike as part of ongoing counterterrorism operations.
The violence in the West Bank has escalated since the outbreak of the Gaza conflict last October. According to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures, at least 603 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since October 7.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which began in Gaza last October, has increasingly spread to the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967. The West Bank is home to approximately 490,000 illegal Israeli settlers living alongside about three million Palestinians.
