NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Israel’s military said it detained over 70 suspects across the occupied West Bank overnight and on Saturday, a day after troops deployed across the territory following violence that left two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian villagers dead.
Soldiers remained in the village of Tell, in the northern West Bank, where Friday's clashes were centered. Palestinians described searches that included raids of a hospital in the city
of Nablus, one of the territory's most violent areas.
Palestinians in the West Bank have faced violence as Israel’s hard-line government, dominated by settler leaders and supporters, has overseen a surge in settlement construction over the past four years. The international community overwhelmingly considers the Israeli settlement construction illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“More than 50 armed soldiers and officers stormed the hospital, terrifying the patients,” Ghassan Barkat, director of Nablus Specialty Hospital, told journalists. He said soldiers on Friday detained, bound and insulted staff and patients, raided hospital departments and arrested a seriously injured man, Ali Hussein Ali Ramadan.
“This should not happen in a healthcare institution,” said Barkat, adding that women and children were present.
An Israeli military statement did not mention the hospital, but it said over 300 locations were searched and what it described as affiliates of the Hamas militant group, arms traffickers, “terrorists” and others were detained.
The circumstances of Friday's events remained unclear, but Israeli media reports and interviews with local Palestinian officials suggested a group of settlers entered Tell and were confronted by residents fearful of 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 military reported the deaths of two soldiers, one of them a settler in a local defense squad. Two other Israelis and four more Palestinians were wounded, health officials said.
The Israeli military on Saturday said it detained 11 suspects in Tell.
Over 80 Palestinians were arrested across the territory, said Amin Shuman, president of the Palestinian higher commission for the affairs of prisoners, calling them “an attempt to impose collective punitive measures and retaliatory policies” against Palestinian citizens after Friday’s events.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
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 casualties were taken.
A strike on a motorbike in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood killed the director of the area’s police force, according to the Interior Ministry and Shifa Hospital.
A strike in the central Gaza refugee camp of Nuseirat wounded three people, according to the Belgian field hospital, which received the casualties.
And Israeli drones struck the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, wounding 10 people, the hospital said. Chaotic scenes unfolded as severely wounded men covered in blood were rushed into the hospital by bystanders.
Israel's military said it struck a member of Hamas' military wing near Al-Aqsa hospital. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the other strikes. Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations.
While the heaviest fighting has subsided since a fragile ceasefire took hold in October following 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 seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children make up most of the dead.
Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.
The Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants on Israel killed some 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.
