Israeli forces made arrests on Saturday in the northern occupied West Bank and increased their presence there to find the perpetrators of a deadly attack claimed by a Palestinian group.
On Friday evening, two assailants shot and killed a guard in his twenties who was on duty outside one of the entrances to the Israeli settlement of Ariel located in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. The identity of the victim has not been disclosed.
The assailants fled by car and the Israeli forces immediately launched an operation to find them.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, on Saturday.
“We claim responsibility for the heroic operation in the settlement of Ariel in which a Zionist (Israeli, editor’s note) officer was killed. It was carried out in response to violations committed by the occupation government in Jerusalem,” he said. said a press release from the group.
An allusion to the clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians who have left nearly 300 Palestinians injured for two weeks on and around the esplanade of the Mosques in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
In the northern West Bank, the presence of Israeli soldiers has been reinforced, in particular at the approaches to the Palestinian town of Salfit, near Ariel, the army said in a press release.
The soldiers also carried out arrests of “suspicious terrorists” and seized weapons in the Palestinian village of Bruqin west of Ariel, and in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, the army said. .
The army usually refers to Palestinians suspected of carrying out attacks or helping to carry them out as “terror suspects”.
– Funeral of a Palestinian –
In addition, dozens of Palestinians took part on Saturday in the funeral of a Palestinian in his twenties, shot dead before dawn during an operation by the Israeli army in the locality of Azzoun, located about twenty kilometers from the colony of Ariel.
Asked by AFP, a spokeswoman for the army said that the operation in Azzoun was linked to the manhunt to “find the terrorists who carried out the attack on Ariel”.
Israeli forces control access to the esplanade, the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest in Judaism under its name of Temple Mount.
The guard’s death in the West Bank brings the number of people killed in anti-Israel attacks since March 22 to 15. Between March 22 and April 7, 14 people were killed in attacks in Israeli territory, including an Israeli Arab policeman and two Ukrainians.
Two of the attacks in Israel were perpetrated in the Tel Aviv area by Palestinians from the West Bank.
In the wake of these attacks, the Israeli army carried out several operations in the West Bank punctuated by deadly clashes. A total of 27 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs were killed, including attackers.
About 475,000 Israelis live in the West Bank in settlements deemed illegal under international law. More than 2.8 million Palestinians also live in this territory.