NABLUS – The Israeli military said it arrested more than 70 people across the occupied West Bank overnight and into Saturday, after deploying forces throughout the territory following a burst of violence that killed two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian villagers.
Troops were still stationed in Tell, a village in the northern West Bank that became the focal point of Friday’s deadly clashes. Palestinian accounts described extensive searches in the area, including a raid on a hospital in nearby Nablus, long considered one of the most volatile cities in the territory.
The latest escalation comes amid worsening violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, where Israel’s hard-line government, led by figures closely aligned with the settler movement, has advanced a sharp expansion of settlement construction over the past four years. Most of the international community regards Israeli settlements in the occupied territory as illegal and a major barrier to any future peace agreement.
Israeli forces carry out arrest during West Bank hospital raid
Ghassan Barkat, director of Nablus Specialty Hospital, told journalists that “more than 50 armed soldiers and officers stormed the hospital, terrifying the patients.” He said troops detained, tied up and insulted staff members and patients on Friday, searched hospital departments and arrested Ali Hussein Ali Ramadan, a man described as seriously wounded.
“This should not happen in a healthcare institution,” Barkat said, noting that women and children were inside the facility at the time.
The Israeli military’s statement did not refer to the hospital raid. It said forces searched more than 300 sites and detained people it identified as Hamas affiliates, weapons dealers, “terrorists” and other suspects.
The full sequence of Friday’s violence was still not clear. However, Israeli media reports and interviews with Palestinian local officials indicated that settlers entered Tell and were confronted by residents who feared an attack. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, the village lies in Area B, where Israelis are prohibited from entering.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians in Tell, while the military reported the deaths of two soldiers, one of them a settler in a local defense squad. Two other Israelis and four more Palestinians were wounded, health officials said.
The Israeli military on Saturday said it detained 11 suspects in Tell.
Over 80 Palestinians were arrested across the territory, said Amin Shuman, president of the Palestinian higher commission for the affairs of prisoners, calling them “an attempt to impose collective punitive measures and retaliatory policies” against Palestinian citizens after Friday’s events.
On Saturday, Israel’s military said Israeli civilians and Palestinians threw rocks in a confrontation in the West Bank village of Susya, and the weapon of a soldier on leave was stolen but retrieved.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Israeli strikes kill at least 4 in Gaza
Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least four Palestinians and wounded at least 15 others across Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, an airstrike killed a man and a woman, whose bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, the hospital said.
In northern Gaza, a strike on a vehicle in the Jabaliya area killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials at Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
A strike on a motorbike in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood killed the director of the area’s police force, according to the Interior Ministry and Shifa Hospital.
A strike in the central Gaza refugee camp of Nuseirat wounded three people, according to the Belgian field hospital, which received the casualties.
And Israeli drones struck the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, wounding 10 people, the hospital said. Chaotic scenes unfolded as severely wounded men covered in blood were rushed into the hospital by bystanders.
Israel’s military said it struck a member of Hamas’ military wing near Al-Aqsa hospital, and that it struck members of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad military wings in the strikes on Nuseirat and Jabaliya. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the other strikes. Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations.
While the heaviest fighting has subsided since a fragile ceasefire took hold in October following two years of war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes, killing at least 1,191 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children make up most of the dead.
Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.
The Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants on Israel killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, sparking the war. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,317 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
