Teen Palestinian girl dies of wounds after Jenin clashes
(Update 1: Changes headline, lede and adds detail throughout)
Jerusalem, Jun 21 (EFE).- A 15-year-old Palestinian girl died Wednesday from a head injury sustained during heavy clashes earlier in the week between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in Jenin, north of the occupied West Bank, authorities reported.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, Sadeel Turkman was shot in the head during a raid in Jenin that saw Israel Defense Forces (IDF) using combat helicopters for the first time since 2005.
An Israeli military officer told Army Radio that the teenager was possibly struck by a bullet while at home and that the military would investigate the incident.
A further six Palestinians were also killed in Monday’s clashes.
Fighting in Jenin raged for over nine hours and was the most intense in the area in years, leaving 90 Palestinians injured, 18 of them seriously, and eight wounded Israeli soldiers.
Turkman’s death brings the number of Palestinians killed in violent incidents in the West Bank and Israel this year to 136.
Many of the victims were Palestinian militants but civilians — including 23 minors — have also died in violent clashes with Israeli troops as fighting in the region has intensified.
On the Israeli side, at least 25 people have died this year, most of them settlers and five of them minors.
New Palestinian armed groups have emerged and the number of attacks against Israel has also surged.
The simmering regional tensions have been fueled by an uptick in attacks from settlers, who on Tuesday night scorched 140 cars and several buildings in the Palestinian city of Hurawa and other nearby settlements, in the north of the occupied West Bank, wounding 34.
Three Israelis have been arrested following the Hurawa incident.
The attack occurred hours after a Palestinian attack on a gas station killed four Israeli civilians, two of them minors, on the outskirts of the settler colony of Eli, also in the northern West Bank.
The Israeli victims have been identified as Nachman Mordoff and Elisha Anteman, both 17 years old, Harel Masod, 21, and Ofer Fayerman, 64.
Israeli authorities strongly condemned the attack and have threatened to take more robust action in the West Bank, which could include a military campaign.
The Palestinian attack was claimed by Hamas as a “natural response” to the death of seven Palestinians the previous day — six of them in clashes with Israeli troops — in Jenin.
In Luban a-Sharqiya, near Eli, settlers overnight attacked a 12-year-old boy returning home on his bicycle, pointed a gun at him and left him seriously injured, according to the official Palestinian agency Wafa.
Two Palestinian teenagers, Mohammed Hashah, 17, and Alaa Hafnawi, 18, were also killed early Wednesday morning while handling explosives in the Balata refugee camp in the city of Nablus, according to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
This year has been the deadliest in the Palestine-Israel conflict since the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005.EFE
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