QALANDIYA, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces killed a young Palestinian man in the Qalandiya refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Monday, while Israeli police claimed their officers had foiled a “terrorist attack.”
The Ramallah-based ministry said it had been informed of the “martyrdom of 30-year-old Ayman Rafiq Mohammed Al-Hashlamoun, who was shot by occupation forces near Qalandiya refugee camp.”
In an Arabic-language statement, Israeli police said its “border police forces in the West Bank thwarted an armed terrorist attack in Qalandiya.”
The police said its “forces identified a suspect exiting a vehicle and opening fire at them using a long-barrelled weapon.
“The forces responded immediately with live fire and neutralized the assailant, with no injuries reported among the personnel.”
Video footage circulating on social media showed a man lying face down and bleeding on a road near the Qalandiya refugee camp, before Israeli soldiers took away a weapon that had reportedly been in his possession.
AFP footage, meanwhile, showed Israeli forces firing tear gas and stun grenades during clashes at the Qalandiya camp, including in the direction of journalists, with a Palestinian youth throwing back a canister at the heavily armed troops.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the Israeli army prevented the organization’s ambulances from reaching the scene and that soldiers fired warning shots.
The Red Crescent later said that Israeli forces wounded a 15-year-old boy with rubber bullets in the Qalandiya camp.
On Monday, Israeli forces also raided the Qalandiya Vocational Training Center run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, a source at the agency said.
The source said Israeli forces “detained staff and students and verbally informed employees that there would be no new academic year” at the center.
The source also said that Israeli forces “detained students and patients at a clinic and school located inside Qalandiya camp.”
Since the war in Gaza erupted in October 2023, after Hamas’s attack on Israel, violence has also surged in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed at least 1,070 Palestinians, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Authority figures.
