JENIN, Palestine: Concrete slabs and sheet metal were piled high alongside streets in Jenin on Saturday, as residents assessed the damage from the Zionist entity’s latest West Bank raid even as explosions persisted nearby. The scars of ongoing clashes in the occupied Palestinian territory, which began on Wednesday as part of what the entity has described as a counter-terrorism operation, were everywhere: collapsed walls, uprooted trees, tiled roofs covering mounds of rubble.
Bulldozers rumbled through the streets on the first day of the raid, clearing the way for Zionist soldiers while tearing up the asphalt and piercing underground pipes, residents of one neighborhood in east Jenin told AFP. Three days later, with fighting elsewhere in the city continuing, "we are cut off from the world”, Taher Al-Saadi said. "The water is cut off. The electricity is cut off, the sewage system is no longer working. All the infrastructure is destroyed, we no longer have any services that work.” He added: "The bakeries are at a standstill. We can’t find milk for the children.”
Zionist raids are not unusual in Jenin, whose refugee camp is a bastion for armed groups resisting the Zionist occupation. But the operation launched on Wednesday was unusually large and long, hitting multiple West Bank cities at once and, in Jenin, showing no sign of letting up. "I think it’s the worst day since the start of the raid,” Wisam Bakr, director of Jenin Government Hospital, said on Saturday. "We hear from time to time clashes and sometimes there is big bombing.”
‘Dark days’
Not far from where Faiza Abu Jaafar lives, an 82-year-old man was shot dead on Friday by a Zionist sniper, residents say, bringing to 20 the number of Palestinians killed in the operation so far. Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad have said at least 13 of the dead were members of their armed wings.
While Zionist military vehicles and bulldozers left the area near her home on Saturday morning, apparently heading for Jenin’s refugee camp, Abu Jaafar said she and her relatives were still shaken. "It’s very hard, for the children and for everyone. We are afraid, we are terrified, look at all the damage,” she said, standing amid piles of rubble. "We are living in dark days.”
Just how dark is still unclear, as Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told AFP that even he does not know exactly what is happening inside the camp, where the latest fighting appeared to be concentrated. "The (Zionists) are besieging the hospitals and cutting off the city from the refugee camp, which has become a military zone with no access,” he said. "Neither the civil defense, nor the ambulances, nor the journalists can go and see what is happening there.”
The Zionist army has denied cutting off access to hospitals, saying it has positioned its forces to prevent militants from gathering in them while allowing ambulances to come and go. Zionist military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said the forces involved in the current raid were fewer than the number who carried out a large-scale raid in July 2023 that left 13 dead. — AFP