West Bank, April 20
14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Saturday. According to Palestinian sources, an ambulance driver was also slain while responding to casualties from a separate attack by armed Jewish settlers.
Early on Friday morning, Israeli forces launched a lengthy raid in the Nur Shams region, close to the strategically important Palestinian city of Tulkarm. They continued to exchange gunfire with armed militants far into Saturday.
At least three drones were observed hovering over Nur Shams, a neighborhood that houses refugees and their descendants from the 1948 conflict that marked the formation of the state of Israel, as Israeli military vehicles gathered and gunfire bursts were audible.
According to the Tulkarm Brigades, which unites members from various Palestinian factions, there was a gun exchange on Saturday between their gunmen and Israeli forces.
Since Israel conquered it during the 1967 Middle East war, the West Bank—a kidney-shaped region roughly 100 km (60 miles) long and 50 km wide—has been at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
GAZA STRIKES CONTINUE
The death toll in Gaza surpassed 34,000, according to Palestinian health authorities on Saturday, despite the fact that violence has persisted there even after the majority of Israel’s combat forces withdrew earlier this month from southern areas.
According to health officials and Hamas media, Israeli strikes struck the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians are seeking shelter, as well as Al-Nuseirat in central Gaza, where at least five houses were demolished, and the northern Al-Jabalia neighborhood.
According to Hamas and Palestinian media sites, a father, daughter, and pregnant mother were murdered in an attack that struck a residence near Rafah. According to medical professionals, the infant is the only member of the family still alive because doctors at the Kuwaiti hospital were able to preserve it.
In a battle spanning more than six months to destroy the Islamist Hamas organization that controls the enclave, Israeli ground forces have not yet reached Rafah. This is in response to Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 Israelis and foreigners.
The decision to strike Rafah, where the military claims the last organized units of Hamas are situated and where the remaining 133 Israeli captives are said to be held, has drawn strong criticism from around the world, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
