Israel army said that a strike in the West Bank killed a “top militant”

The Israeli army claimed that it had prevented a planned “terrorist attack” by eliminating a senior Palestinian militant in an airstrike in the occupied West Bank early on Wednesday.

The army said that throughout the previous year, Ahmed Abdullah Abu Shalal was responsible for a “number of terrorist attacks,” one of which occurred in east Jerusalem that had been annexed.

However, the body of a “unidentified martyr killed by the occupation (Israel) in a vehicle bombing” has been received by a hospital in Nablus, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah.

The Israeli army said in a statement that included a video clip demonstrating the strike on a car that he was “eliminated in a precision air strike.”

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According to the army, intelligence “of his cell’s intentions to carry out an imminent terrorist attack” led to Abu Shalal’s death.

The army stated that he was in charge of the April shooting in east Jerusalem’s Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood that left two people hurt, but it did not provide any other information.

Additionally, in October, Abu Shalal was behind a bombing on Israeli soldiers that resulted in one soldier being hurt. Where the soldiers were targeted was not disclosed by the army.

“Under Abdullah’s leadership, the terrorist infrastructure in the Balata (refugee) camp in Nablus has received funding and guidance from Iranian sources,” according to the army.

There hasn’t been this much bloodshed on the West Bank since the second Palestinian intifada, which began in 2000 and ended in 2005, when the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza broke out on October 7.

An AFP count based on information from both sides indicates that some 350 people have died in the region as a result of settlers’ violence and Israeli army raids.

Following a night of deadly bombardments in the southern part of the enclave, supplies of medicine for Israeli captives and Palestinian civilians were scheduled to begin arriving in Gaza on Wednesday as part of a deal mediated by Qatar and France.

Approximately 132 of the 250 captives that Palestinian resistance members grabbed during the horrific October 7 attacks remain in Gaza; at least 27 of them are thought to have died.

Israeli society is preoccupied with what will happen to those who are still held captive, and appeals for a ceasefire from around the world have been fueled by a larger humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged zone where starvation and disease are real threats.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have resulted in at least 24,448 Palestinian deaths and 61,504 injuries since October 7.

Doha announced a pact “between Israel and (Hamas), where medicine along with other humanitarian aid is to be delivered to civilians in Gaza. in exchange for delivering medication needed for Israeli captives in Gaza” on Tuesday in a statement to the official Qatar News Agency (QNA).

Majid Al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Qatari foreign ministry, informed QNA that the supplies and medication would be shipped from Doha to El-Arish, Egypt, and then to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

The agreement was verified by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, the Israeli prime minister.

According to the French presidency, 45 hostages are anticipated to receive medication as part of the arrangement.

It stated that the medications will be received by the International Committee of the Red Cross, split up into batches, and given to the hostages right away as they arrive at a hospital on Wednesday in the border town of Rafah in southern Gaza.

The political office of Hamas is located in Qatar. In November, amid a ceasefire brokered by Qatar, the group released scores of Palestinian captives detained by Israel.

Spokesman for the US National Security Council John Kirby expressed optimism on Tuesday that negotiations mediated by Qatar may result in another agreement of this kind “soon.”

According to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, Hamas’s extraordinary October onslaught marked the start of the Gaza war and claimed 1,140 lives in Israel, the majority of them civilians.

Since then, Israeli ground operations and shelling have killed at least 24,285 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly 70% of them were women and children. This information comes from the health ministry of the region.

Early on Wednesday, the government announced that 81 more people had died in nighttime strikes, including those who died in Khan Yunis, the major city in the south.

Approximately 85% of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents, according to the UN, have been displaced by the fighting; many of them have been forced into shelters where they struggle to find access to food, fuel, water, and medical treatment.

Witnesses reported strikes on the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis just before midnight on Tuesday, sending hundreds of displaced people seeking shelter there into a state of terror.

Earlier in the day, carts and lorries loaded with belongings from displaced families rolled down the street as city dwellers picked through the debris left by the strikes.

“You are able to observe the damage. Residents Mohamad Ramadan told AFP, pointed at a wrecked home where he claimed several people had been slain. “This room was inhabited by people, this one was inhabited by 20 children, women and men, and the same thing goes for the neighbouring houses in the whole camp,” Ramadan added.

“These men can still find some of their body parts, nothing but remains torn apart,” he stated.

Tuesday night in Tel Aviv, anti-war demonstrators clashed with police while some brandished placards that said, “Stop the genocide” and “End the siege”.

“The occupation is relentless and results in bloodshed. In a few years, the children in Gaza who are growing up today will be the ones facing us, activist Chava Lerman told AFP.

“Israeli bombings are killing civilians,” stated Michal Sapri, another protestor. “It produces no results. We still have hostages there. We won’t use additional military force to free them.”

Israeli officials have been under constant public pressure to secure the release of the hostages, and military action is seen necessary in order to broker any sort of agreement.

Two captives, whose murders were proclaimed by Hamas in a video, were confirmed to have been slain in Gaza on Tuesday by an Israeli kibbutz.

The United States and the European Union consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization, and since the war started, violence involving regional allies of Iran has escalated, raising worries of an all-out conflict throughout the Middle East.

Following claims by the Houthi rebels in Yemen of yet another missile attack on a cargo ship in the Red Sea, the US military said on Tuesday that it has launched more attacks in the country.

It happened a few days after the rebels, who claim they are attacking Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea in support of Gaza, launched an offensive against several targets inside the Houthi-controlled nation of Yemen. The US and Britain had also struck numerous targets inside the country.

Washington is expected to reclassify the Houthis as terrorists on Wednesday, according to US media reports. The designation was previously dropped in 2021.

Additionally on Tuesday, Israeli forces attacked Hezbollah locations within Lebanon. According to a security source, these attacks were “the most intense” on a single location since the militants linked with Hamas started firing cross-border weapons at Israel following the commencement of the Gaza War.

Iran, which supports Hezbollah and the Houthis equally, launched a missile strike in Iraq’s Kurdistan area in response to claims made by its Revolutionary Guards that the target was a “gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” and an Israeli spy headquarters.

Additionally, it claimed to have struck targets in Syria belonging to the Islamic State organization, while Pakistan accused it of carrying out an attack inside its borders that claimed the lives of two children.

“Despite the fact that the conflict is still simmering down, we are already engaged in a regional war,” stated Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s director of the Iran Project.