Israeli Forces Kill Two Palestinians in West Bank

West Bank, MINA – Israeli forces on Friday killed two Palestinians and injured another near Salem military camp, west of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, according to security sources.

They confirmed that Israeli troops opened fire towards a Palestinian vehicle in the vicinity of the camp, killing two of its passengers and critically injuring the other, Wafa reported.

The slain Palestinians were not identified, while the casualty, also not identified, was rushed to a hospital in the Israeli city of Afula.

Soldiers prevented a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance from approaching the scene, forcing it to retreat at gunpoint, as reported by Mahmoud Sa‘di.

They also prevented journalists from reporting on the incident, firing tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets towards them.

The Israeli military said that the three Palestinians purportedly attempted to carry out a “combined shooting/stabbing attack”. No soldier was hurt in the alleged attack.

There were no official Palestinian information on the incident, and circumstances surrounding it remain unclear and largely based on the Israeli version of events.

Many Palestinians were injured or killed in similar incidents under the pretext of alleged stabbing attempts.

Israeli has been criticized for its reflexive use of lethal force and “extrajudicial killings” when Palestinian alleged attackers no longer pose an immediate threat. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that circumstances surrounding such killings over the past months remain disputed.

Various international, Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations have slammed Israel’s policy of “extrajudicial killings” against Palestinians.

Video footage for similar alleged attacks, such that of Elor Azarya’s killing of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, appear to disapprove Israeli military claims, showing that lethal force was used against Palestinians when they posed no immediate, life-threatening danger, and they did not even attempt to carry out any attacks.

Palestinians have always maintained that such incidents among other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 54-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)