NABLUS, West Bank (AP) – The Israeli military said it arrested more than 70 suspects across occupied the West Bank overnight and on Saturday, the day after troops deployed throughout the territory after the violence that left two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian villagers dead.
The soldiers remained in the village of Tell in the northern West Bank, where Friday’s clashes were centered. The Palestinians described the raids as including raids on a hospital in the city of Nablus, one of the most violent areas of the territory.
“More than 50 armed soldiers and officers attacked the hospital, terrorizing the patients,” Ghassan Barkat, director of the Nablus Special Hospital, told reporters. He said soldiers on Friday arrested, tied up and insulted staff and patients, raided all hospital departments and arrested a seriously injured man, Ali Hussein Ali Ramadan.
“This should not happen in a health facility,” Barkat said, adding that women and children were present.
The Israeli military in a statement did not name the hospital but said more than 300 sites were searched. He said he arrested what he described as members of the militant group Hamas, arms traffickers, “terrorists” and others.
The circumstances of Friday’s events remained unclear, but Israeli media reports and interviews with local Palestinian officials suggested that a group of settlers entered Tell and confronted residents fearing an attack. The village is off-limits to Israelis as part of Area B under the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians in Tell, while the army reported the death of two soldiers, one of them a settler in a local defense squad. Two other Israelis and four Palestinians were wounded, health officials said.
The Israeli military said it arrested 11 suspects in Tell.
More than 80 Palestinians were arrested across the territory, said Amin Shuman, president of the Palestinian High Commission for Prisoner Affairs, calling them “an attempt to impose collective punitive measures and retaliatory policies” against Palestinian citizens after Friday’s events.
Palestinians in the West Bank were left to repair damaged homes and vehicles. They have faced violence as Israel’s hardline government, dominated by settler leaders and supporters, has overseen a increase in the construction of settlements during the last four years.
The international community overwhelmingly considers the construction of Israeli settlements in these areas illegal and an obstacle to peace.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and demanded by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Israeli strikes kill at least 4 in Gaza
Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least four Palestinians and wounded at least 15 others across Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, an airstrike killed a man and a woman, whose bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, the hospital said.
In northern Gaza, a strike on a vehicle in the Jabaliya area killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials at Shifa Hospital, where the victims were taken.
A hit on a motorcycle in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City killed the director of the area’s police force, according to the Interior Ministry and Shifa Hospital.
An attack on Gaza’s central refugee camp, Nuseirat, wounded three people, according to the Belgian field hospital, which received casualties.
And Israeli drones struck near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, injuring 10 people, the hospital said. Chaotic scenes unfolded as badly injured people covered in blood were rushed to hospital by bystanders.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attacks. Militants have carried out gun attacks on troops, and Israel says its attacks are in response to this and other violations.
While fierce fighting has eased since a fragile ceasefire was held in October after two years of war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes, killing at least 1,191 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are generally seen as reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. He does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants, but says women and children make up the majority of the dead.
Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.
The October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants in Israel killed an estimated 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, sparking the war. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,317 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
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