The attack in Kafr Dan, near Jenin, comes as Israeli forces step up their deadly attacks in the occupied West Bank.
Israel killed six Palestinians in an airstrike in the village of Kafr Dan near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, as Israel intensified its attacks on the region amid the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli special forces entered the village on Tuesday, surrounded houses and shelled them, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
The six men killed were between 21 and 32 years old, according to the Ministry of Health. One of them, Ahmad Smoudi, was the brother of a 12-year-old who was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Jenin in 2022.
The Jenin Battalion of Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said it engaged in “fierce” fighting with Israeli forces in Kafrdan on Tuesday morning.
The Israeli military said it carried out a “counter-terrorism operation” in the town, killing four armed Palestinians. The Army added that attack helicopters were deployed in the attack and that there were no casualties.
Israeli forces killed four Palestinians west of Ramallah on Monday and three in Jenin on Friday.
The Israeli military has regularly carried out deadly airstrikes in the West Bank over the past few years, a trend that has intensified since the start of the Gaza war.
According to Palestinian health authorities, Israel has killed 544 Palestinians, including 133 children, in the West Bank since October 2023, when violence broke out in the Gaza Strip. Israel also detained thousands of Palestinians during that period.
Palestinians living in the West Bank also face violent attacks by Israeli settlers. Over the past few months, they have attacked farmers and raided Palestinian villages, often under the protection of the Israeli military.
Rawhi Fattouh of the Palestinian National Council said Israel’s airstrikes in the West Bank were “a continuation of massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide targeting the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.”
“This racist (Israeli) government is using all its means to explode the situation in the West Bank and the region, transform the conflict into a religious and ideological struggle and turn the region into a melting pot of violence, murder and massacre.” Fattouh said in his statement:
He called on the international community to intervene and “quell this madness.”
