RAMALLAH, West Bank — An Israeli man was fatally shot in a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank Saturday morning, Israel’s army said, while deadly strikes rocked northern Gaza.
The army said the man was killed in the town of Qalqilya, where Israeli forces fatally shot two Hamas members Friday, the latest flare of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October.
Since the war’s start, at least 549 Palestinians in the territory have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which tracks the killings. Over the same period, Palestinians in the West Bank have killed at least nine Israelis, including five soldiers, according to U.N. data.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency group active in Gaza, said they pulled 38 bodies from a building hit by an Israeli strike Saturday in an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City. The AP cannot independently verify the number.
The group said its emergency workers were also digging for survivors at the site of another strike in Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. The Associated Press has been unable to verify the figures provided by the emergency group.
The Israeli army said its fighter jets struck two Hamas military sites in the Gaza City area but did not elaborate further.
A separate Israeli strike Saturday in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley killed a member of the military wing of al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Group, a Sunni Muslim faction closely allied with Hamas, according to the group. The member was the seventh killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the war began.
The Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7. when Hamas members who stormed southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage. Israel has responded by bombarding and invading the enclave, killing more than 37, 400 Palestinians there according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Israeli nationals are prohibited from entering Qalqilya and other areas of the West Bank that fall under the under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
In April, the death of a 14-year-old Israeli settler sparked a series of settler attacks on Palestinian towns in the territory. The army said a Palestinian was later arrested in connection with the killing.
In 2014, the abduction and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank escalated tensions and eventually ignited a 50-day Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, at the time the deadliest round of fighting between the two sides.
Over recent years, the Palestinian Authority’s influence in the northern West Bank has waned as political groups have grown increasingly powerful.
Also Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died from his wounds after being shot by Israeli forces in Ramallah last week. Commenting on the shooting, the Israeli army said its forces raided al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah to arrest a suspect Friday and then opened fire on a group of Palestinians who were pelting them with stones.
Israel said Saturday that it was investigating a separate incident into conduct of its soldiers after a video surfaced online showing an injured Palestinian being transported on the hood of an Israeli armored car in the northern West Bank. The army said the man in the video was a wanted suspect and injured during an exchange of fire between Palestinians and Israeli forces near the city of Jenin. The man was being transported to a Red Crescent ambulance situated nearby, it said. The army said the conduct in the video didn’t “conform to the values” of the army.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories as part of their hoped-for independent state.
Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war