NABLUS, Palestinian Territories — A
Palestinian lawyer was killed by Israeli occupation forces Wednesday, the fifth
day of Israeli raids in the West Bank.
اضافة اعلان
The Palestinian
health ministry said human rights lawyer Muhammad Hassan Muhammad Assaf, 34,
“died after being shot in the chest by the Israeli occupation army during the
aggression on the city of Nablus”.
Israeli forces were escorting Jewish settlers who
were repairing Joseph’s Tomb and used “riot dispersal means and live
ammunition” against Palestinian protesters.
The Israeli army did not confirm its forces had shot
the lawyer, whose death brought to 16 the number of Palestinian fatalities in
the ongoing violence.
Israelis has poured in additional forces into the
West Bank and is reinforcing the Separation Wall in the occupied territory.
‘On the offensive’
Witnesses told AFP Assaf was
standing by the roadside, having just taken his nephews to school, when he was
hit by a bullet as Israeli forces fired while pulling out of Nablus.
Assaf was mourned as a “fierce defender of his
people” by his employer, the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission of the
Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian prime
minister Mohammad Shtayyeh charged that Israeli soldiers “murder for the sake
of murder, with a license granted by the prime minister of the occupying state,
Naftali Bennett, without the slightest regard for international law”.
Bennett has warned that Israel is now “on the
offensive” and determined to arrest militant suspects.
The latest major attack Israel suffered was a
shooting attack last Thursday in Tel Aviv that killed three people and wounded
over a dozen more. The gunman died in a shootout with Israeli forces following
an all-night manhunt.
In the city of Tulkarem, Israeli forces said they
shot and wounded a Palestinian who fled special forces trying to arrest him.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported 31 people
wounded around the Nablus site and a nearby village, including 10 hit by live
rounds.
The holy site, where Jews say the Biblical patriarch
Joseph is buried, is a frequent flashpoint between Israelis and Palestinians.
It was partially destroyed in 2000 during a Palestinian uprising and also
torched in 2015.
Palestinian authorities consider the wider site an
Islamic archaeological monument where a revered cleric was buried two centuries
ago.
The violence has come during the Muslim holy month
of Ramadan and ahead of the start of Passover Friday, an overlap that can
heighten tensions around sacred sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Last year, during the same period Israel launched an
11-day war on Gaza following violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
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