Ramallah, January 9 (RHC)-- Israeli soldiers have shot and injured a Palestinian teenager during an overnight raid on a number of houses in a town south of the occupied West Bank. Muhammad Ayyad Awad, a local official, said that 19-year-old Noor Muhammad Hamid Zaaqiq sustained gunshot wounds in front of his house in Beit Ummar, located eleven kilometers northwest of Hebron, late on Tuesday as Israeli troops sought to arrest six men in the area.

Zaaqiq was on his way back home after finishing work at a gas station nearby. He was hit in the left foot and was transferred to al-Ahli hospital in Hebron to receive medical treatment. Israeli forces also arrested nine other Palestinians, among them teenagers, during separate detention raids in the West Bank.

During recent months, Israeli forces have frequently raided Palestinian homes in the West Bank, arresting dozens of Palestinian people, who are then transferred to Israeli detention centers where they are kept without any charges brought up against them. There have been many reports about deteriorating health of several Palestinian prisoners held inside Israeli jails.

The Palestinian Authority Department of Prisoners Affairs said in a statement that Palestinian prisoners being kept inside Israeli detention facilities are suffering from serious health problems, yet they are not receiving proper medical treatment.

There are reportedly over 7,000 Palestinians in 17 Israeli prisons and detention camps. Among Palestinian prisoners behind Israeli bars, there are 18 women, 250 children, 1,500 sick detainees, who are mostly in a critical condition, and 540 Palestinians held without any trial under what is called 'administrative detention.'