(Jenin) Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Thursday claimed responsibility for explosions during an Israeli incursion in Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding 16 others, according to a military official.
Captain Alon Sacgiu, 22, “fell during an operation in the Jenin sector,” the Israeli army reported in a statement, adding that another soldier was seriously injured.
According to a military official speaking on condition of anonymity, 15 others were more lightly injured.
“The soldiers were injured due to the detonation of an explosive device,” said this source, without further details.
“Our heroic fighters from the Jenin Battalion managed to detonate two [Israeli] military vehicles,” the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, the Al Quds Brigades, said in a statement, claiming to have activated six explosive devices.
During the raid, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it had treated a young Palestinian man, “who was shot in the face and transferred to a hospital.”
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency said he was wounded by Israeli fire and reported that the Israeli army “incurded into Jenin shortly before midnight and remained deployed until dawn on Thursday in the city and around the refugee camp, with dozens of snipers on the roofs of commercial buildings and houses, against a backdrop of violent clashes and sounds of explosions.”
The Al Quds Brigades said in their statement that the nighttime clashes in the Palestinian city, where Israeli raids and violence are frequent, lasted eight hours.
“We will not leave the battlefield or stop the clashes until the occupation [Israel] is defeated,” they said.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, violence has intensified in the West Bank.
According to the Palestinian authorities, 553 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army or settlers since October 7 in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
At least 15 Israelis were killed in attacks, including soldiers, in the same territory and during the same period, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
