Israeli forces kill 16 people in Gaza and the West Bank, medics say
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Mourners carrying the bodies of a Palestinian family who were killed during an Israeli raid in the village of Tammun, in the occupied West Bank, on March 15.
PHOTO: REUTERS
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces killed 16 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, health officials said, in one of the heaviest death tolls in a single day in weeks, as Israel continued to launch attacks on Lebanon and Iran.
Medics and the interior ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza said an Israeli airstrike killed a senior police official and eight other officers when it hit their vehicle near the entrance to Zawayda town in the central Gaza Strip.
At least 14 other people, mostly bystanders, were wounded, the Gaza health ministry said.
Mr Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 37, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and two of their children, Mohammad and Othman, aged five and seven respectively, were shot in the head in the village of Tammun, while two of their other children sustained injuries, said the Palestinian health authorities.
The Israeli military said in a statement that forces had operated in the village of Tammun to arrest Palestinians wanted for involvement in “terrorist” activity against security forces.
“During the operation, a vehicle accelerated towards the forces, who perceived an immediate threat to their safety and responded with gunfire. As a result, four Palestinians who were in the vehicle were killed,” the military said.
The circumstances of the incident are under review, it said.
Speaking to Reuters at the hospital, one of the two surviving boys Khaled, 12, said he heard his mother crying, his father praying, but no voice of any of his other brothers before silence prevailed after shots sprayed the car.
“We came under direct fire, we didn’t know the source. Everyone in the car was martyred, except my brother Mustafa and me,” the boy said.
He said soldiers, who pulled him out of the vehicle before beating him, cried: “We killed dogs.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry said one Palestinian was killed in an attack by Israeli settlers overnight.
Israeli settlers in the West Bank are taking advantage of curbs on movement imposed during the US-Israeli war on Iran to attack Palestinians, with military roadblocks preventing ambulances from reaching victims quickly, rights groups and medics say.
Settlers have killed at least five Palestinians in the West Bank since the Iran war began on Feb 28, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Gaza deaths
In Gaza, health officials said an Israeli airstrike had killed three people on March 15 – a man, his pregnant wife and their son – in the western area of Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, taking the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the enclave since the Iran war erupted to at least 26.
There was no immediate Israeli response to that report.
While Israeli attacks on Gaza declined at the beginning of the war with Iran, they have since begun to rise again. While a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza in October, there have been regular outbreaks of violence since then. REUTERS
