Israel kills seven Palestinians in massive assault on West Bank town of Qabatiya

Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians on Thursday evening in a wide-scale and violent military offensive in the occupied West Bank town of Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin.

The offensive lasted around 10 hours and left 11 wounded from live ammunition, according to the Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

Palestinian Red Crescent teams recovered the body of a man identified as Shadi Sami Zakarneh from a house that had been surrounded and bombed by Israeli forces.

Drone strikes also targeted vehicles in crowded parts of the town, with children among those wounded by the attacks.

Three young men were shot dead by Israeli forces on the rooftop of a home besieged by Israeli forces.

Wafa reported that two men were also run over by Israeli military jeeps.

Qabatiya’s municipality denounced the offensive and killings as a "massacre", adding it was a "new crime committed by the occupation amid troubling silence from the international community".

The armed wing of the Palestinian Fatah faction, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, later announced that two senior commanders were killed by an Israeli army raid in Qabatiya.

The brigades said in a Telegram statement that in addition to Mustafa Faisal Zakarna and Shady Sami Zakarna, five other fighters were also killed by Israeli forces. 

Another Telegram post carried the photos of both senior members.

The seven Palestinians killed in the town have been identified as Mohammad Khalid Abu Rob, Omar Hamza Abu Rob, Ahmad Maher Zakarneh, Mustafa Faisal Zakarneh, Fadi Joudat Hanaysheh, Mohammad Omar Kmeil, and Shadi Sami Zakarneh.

An AP journalist present at the scene during the violent offensive said they witnessed three soldiers push the bodies of Palestinians off the rooftops of adjacent multi-story buildings, sending them falling to the ground.

The incident has been decried as a war crime, with various human rights organisations and figures denouncing the act.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, a young man was killed by Israeli forces in Qalandia camp, north of Jerusalem, The New Arab’s sister publication, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported.

Israeli forces also stormed the city of Nablus, raiding a home, searching and ransacking it.

In a village east of Qalqilya, Israeli forces raided homes and detained at least 20 young men, carrying out interrogations.

Since the launch of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, Israel has frequently raided and violently attacked West Bank towns, killing Palestinians and carrying out mass arrests.

According to the UN, 622 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem from October until August.

The report from the UN added that 126 of those people were killed in air strikes, while 11 were killed by extremist Israeli settlers.