RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug 14 (Reuters) – The Israeli military said it had carried out an airstrike on Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday while Hamas said its fighters were engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli forces in the territory’s Tubas city.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that one man was killed in a raid in Tubas, while four others were killed in an Israeli drone strike in the nearby town of Tammun.
It did not give their identities, but Tubas residents said the man killed there was as a member of the Islamist Hamas.
The Israeli military said in a statement: “As part of counterterrorism activity…an aircraft struck a number of armed terrorists in Tammun.”
It did not give a casualty figure.
The Al-Qassam Brigades – the armed wing of Hamas – said: “Our fighters have been engaged for hours in fierce clashes with the invading occupation forces on several fronts in the city of Tubas in the occupied West Bank.”
Reuters journalists at the scene of a raid in Tubas saw a badly damaged house, with shattered glass and blood stains on the ground.
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A youth said his family were sleeping in their home when Israeli special forces burst in and called out for his father.
“My father woke us up and he carried his weapon and there was an exchange of gunfire,” he said.
“Then they asked him to surrender but my father said he will not surrender and he would rather be a martyr or run away. My mother and us started to ask him to surrender but he refused.”
Violence in the West Bank was already on the rise before the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas broke out last October, but it has since escalated, with stepped-up Israeli military raids, Jewish settler violence and Palestinian street attacks.
Israeli forces have killed at least 620 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – areas the Palestinians envisage as part of their own eventual state – since the start of the Gaza war, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
Some have been armed fighters but others have been stone-throwing youths or uninvolved civilians.
At least 30 Israelis – civilians and soldiers – have been killed by Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank in the same period.
WAFA also reported that President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in the West Bank, is travelling to Ankara on Thursday where he will address the Turkish parliament.
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Abbas’ speech takes place as the war in Gaza threatens to spill into a full-out regional conflict involving Iran and its proxies in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
A new round of internationally mediated talks to end the Gaza war and secure the release of Israeli hostages are still slated to go ahead Thursday, though Hamas, which ran Gaza before the war, said it will not attend.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Maytaal Angel; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
