Dozens wounded as Israel raids West Bank city
RAMALLAH, West Bank—Israeli forces carried out a rare daytime raid on Tuesday in the heart of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered. Dozens of Palestinians were wounded, according to local medics, as people throwing stones scattered after gunfire and tear gas.
Israel said it targeted money exchanges linked to Hamas. But the raid was likely to further undermine the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority as it seeks to capitalize on the recent decision by some major Western countries to recognize Palestinian statehood.
The Palestinian Authority, which is led by rivals of Hamas, did not immediately comment on the raid. It cooperates with Israel on security matters and exercises limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank. Many Palestinians view it as a corrupt and autocratic entity.
‘Terroristic activity’
Violence in the West Bank has surged during the war in Gaza, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations targeting militants that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has also been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Israeli forces routinely operate in Ramallah and other cities administered by the Palestinian Authority, but daytime raids into downtown are rare.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that its double strike on a Gaza hospital that killed 20 people targeted what it believed was a Hamas surveillance camera. But the first strike killed a cameraman from the Reuters news agency doing a live television shot, according to witnesses and health officials.
The military released its initial findings into the strike, offering no immediate explanation for striking twice and no evidence for an assertion that six of the dead were militants, including two who were identified by their employers as a health-care worker at the hospital and an emergency services driver. The dead also included five journalists.
Many ways to hit camera
The military said the back-to-back strikes on southern Gaza’s largest hospital were ordered because soldiers believed militants were using the camera to observe Israeli forces. But its account appeared to contradict witnesses at the scene of Monday’s attack on Nasser Hospital.
A senior Hamas official denied that Hamas was operating a camera at the hospital.
“If this claim was true, there are many means to neutralize this camera without targeting a health-care facility with a tank shell,” Bassem Naim, a member of the group’s political bureau, told The Associated Press (AP) in a phone interview.
An initial strike hit a top floor of one of the hospital’s buildings. Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri was killed in that blast while filming from the site, according to a fellow journalist and a doctor at the hospital.
Hospital officials said a second person, who has not been identified, was also killed in the first strike.
Health workers, journalists and relatives of patients then rushed up an external staircase to reach the site of the first blast. Photos taken from below showed at least 16 people gathered on the staircase, trying to help those hit. Among them were four men wearing the orange vests of emergency responders or health workers.
