Israeli forces wound two Palestinian construction workers in occupied West Bank

Israeli forces wounded two Palestinians on Monday in the village of Aqaba, near the northern occupied West Bank city of Toubas.

Residents said that the two young men were wounded while Israeli forces crossed through the village at dawn during confrontations with Palestinian fighters in the neighbouring town of Zababdeh.

"One young man is from the village, the other is from Toubas, and both construction workers who were up early to go to their work," Zaid Abu Arrah, a resident of Aqaba, told The New Arab.

"The occupation forces were retreating from Zababdeh, where they had been fighting with fighters to a military base near Toubas, when youngsters from the village began to confront them with stones, and others shot at the occupation soldiers," said Abu Arrah.

"Two young Palestinians were shot and injured this morning by Israeli soldiers during confrontations in the town of Aqqaba, north of the city of Tubas in the northern Jordan Valley"

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"The soldiers opened fire and wounded the two workers, one in the shoulder and the other in the thigh," he added. "They arrested one of them, but then when they saw that he had nothing to do with the confrontations, they let him go." Residents described both men's wounds as "moderate" and that they were recovering.

The armed confrontations described above occurred between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in the village of Rummanah, near Toubas and south of Nablus.

Palestinian fighters also opened fire on the Israeli settlement of Karme Tsor, which illegally occupied lands of the Palestinian village of Beit Ummar near Hebron.

Video footage shows the moment when Israeli troops shot and killed 58-year-old Salah Sawaftah during a military raid into the West Bank town of Tubas on 19 August 2022. pic.twitter.com/a07i5xdet5

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Since last year, Palestinian armed activism has been on the rise in the West Bank in response to Israeli forces' violent raids which killed 226 Palestinians, including 36 children, throughout 2022.

Following Israeli forces' killing of three Palestinians in the first week of the new year, concerns rise among Palestinians in the occupied territories of more deaths to come by Israel, especially after the formation of the new Israeli government's far-right alliance led by Benyamin Netanyahu.