• Hezbollah launches drone attacks on two military sites, warns more to come
• Israeli rights group says Palestinian prisoners subject to systematic abuse

JENIN: Palestinian officials said Israeli forces killed 12 people in three separate raids in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, as violence in the occupied territory showed no sign of abating.

Five people were killed in the Jenin area and four in Aqaba town in Tubas district when Israeli forces carried out early-morning raids, the health ministry in Ramallah said.

The Israeli army said three people were killed and two arrested in another raid in the village of Kafr Qud, west of Jenin.

The Palestinian Red Crescent had earlier reported deaths and injuries “due to the occupation’s shelling of two vehicles in the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin”.

Aqaba residents said Israeli troops arrived at dawn and surrounded the house of Amid Ghanam, leading to clashes between troops and young Palestinians.

Ghanam and two others were killed in the clashes, while another teenager was killed near a hospital, Tubas governor Ahmed Assad told AFP.

“The army entered and surrounded the house as snipers took positions on nearby rooftops and shot anyone who moved,” he said.

The teenager was shot when the troops “entered the area of the hospital”, Assad said. Aqaba mayor Abdel Razzaq Abu Arra said the teenager “was killed in cold blood”. “This Zionist crime is a systematic crime that the Israelis carry out on a daily basis,” he added.

Drone, rocket attacks

Lebanon’s group Hezbollah launched a series of drone and rocket attacks into northern Israel on Tuesday but warned that its much-anticipated retaliation for Israel’s killing of a top commander last week was yet to come.

Hezbollah said it launched a swarm of attack drones at two military sites near Acre in northern Israel, and also attacked an Israeli military vehicle in another location.

The Israeli military said a number of hostile drones were identified crossing from Lebanon and one was intercepted.

Israeli medical officials said seven people were evacuated to hospital, to the south of the coastal city of Nahariya, one in critical condition.

The Israeli military said an initial investigation indicated the injuries were caused by an interceptor that “missed the target and hit the ground, injuring several civilians.” It said the incident was still under review.

A Hezbollah source told Reuters that “the response to the assassination of commander Fuad Shukr has not yet come.”

Earlier on Tuesday, four people were killed in a strike on a home in the Lebanese town of Mayfadoun, nearly 30km north of the border, medics and a security source said. Two additional security sources said those killed were Hezbollah fighters, but the group had not yet posted its usual death notices.

Systematic abuse, torture

Meanwhile, Israeli rights group B’Tselem said in a report that Israel has conducted a systematic policy of prisoner abuse and torture since the start of the Gaza war, subjecting Palestinian detainees to acts ranging from arbitrary violence to sexual abuse.

It said the report, issued on Monday, was based on interviews with 55 Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel detained in Israeli prisons since Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel that set off the war, most of them without being tried.

“The testimonies clearly indicate a systematic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel,” the report said.

The B’Tselem report was issued days after the Israeli military detained nine soldiers accused of severe abuse of a prisoner in a military facility in the Negev desert. Israeli press reports said the soldiers were accused of sexually abusing a member of an elite Hamas unit.

The report detailed allegations that Palestinian prisoners were subjected to arbitrary beatings, degrading and humiliating treatment and sleep deprivation, as well as “the repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity”.

“The overall picture indicates abuse and torture carried out under orders, in utter defiance of Israel’s obligations both under domestic law and international law,” it said.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2024