TULKAREM: Palestinian officials accused the Zionist entity of a "brutal crime” on Tuesday after footage shared on social media appeared to show a military vehicle running over a dead Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, said the footage was from a military operation in the city of Tulkarem. The Palestinian ministry said the incident summed up the "culture of hatred” fostered by Zionist forces.
"This complex and brutal crime is not the first and will not be the last in the series of crimes of the occupation and terrorist settler militia members,” the ministry said in a statement. Violence in the West Bank has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades since Oct 7. Zionist forces carry out regular raids in the West Bank, often triggering gun battles with Palestinian fighters.
A Zionist police spokesman said their forces had carried out an operation with other agencies in Tulkarem on Monday to arrest a "wanted” man. "Forces arrested the wanted man after he was hit by fire from our forces,” the spokesman said, confirming three other fighters were killed. The police gave no detail of the possible charges against the suspect.
The armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, said the three men were their fighters. Large crowds of people marched through Tulkarem on Tuesday chanting slogans during the funerals of the men, an AFP correspondent reported. The footage shared on social media appears to be taken from a security camera and shows an armored vehicle slowly driving over an apparently lifeless body.
The vehicle then stops, restarts and drives off, crushing the body again with its back wheels. Other footage, apparently taken from the same camera, shows an exchange of fire between Zionist forces and fighters. In a separate incident on Tuesday, Zionist forces shot and killed a Palestinian man near Ramallah, according to sources on both sides.
Zionist army raids and settler attacks in the West Bank have killed at least 334 people since Oct 7, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry. The Zionist entity has occupied the West Bank, home to about three million Palestinians, since 1967. Some 490,000 Zionists live in West Bank settlements deemed illegal under international law.
Meanwhile, more than three months into the deadliest ever Gaza war, US top diplomat Antony Blinken urged the Zionist entity on Tuesday to "avoid further civilian harm” in the besieged Palestinian territory where more than 23,000 people have died in the war. Blinken also voiced hope that, after the war, the Zionist could push on with its efforts towards regional integration, following its US-brokered normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates and other states.
On Tuesday, the Zionist army again bombed Gaza and battled Hamas fighters. An AFP correspondent reported intense strikes overnight in Khan Yunis and Rafah, the biggest cities in the south of Gaza which are crowded with internally displaced people. The Zionist entity’s relentless bombardment and a ground invasion of Gaza have killed at least 23,210 people, mostly women and children. The Zionist army says its death toll inside Gaza had risen to 185 after nine soldiers were killed on Monday. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, speaking in Qatar on Tuesday, argued that the Oct 7 attack "came after an attempt to marginalize the Palestinian cause”.
He charged that, "despite the heavy price, the massacres and the war of genocide, it (the Zionist entity) failed to achieve any of its goals”. In further comments, released later by Hamas in Gaza, he called on Muslim states "to support the resistance with weapons, because this is... not the battle of the Palestinian people alone”. The war has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, and the United Nations says many are at risk of famine and disease.
Since the war started, fears have also grown of an escalating conflict between the Zionist entity and its other regional enemies, a loose alliance of Iran-backed armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Hezbollah said Tuesday it had launched a drone attack on the Zionist entity’s "northern command center” in Safed as part of its response to the killings of Hamas deputy leader Saleh Al-Aruri and Hezbollah field commander Wissam Tawil. The Zionist army also said Monday it had killed a "central” Hamas figure in Syria, Hassan Akasha.