Mass funeral held in West Bank for Palestinians killed in Israeli raid on Nablus

Nablus, February 23 (RHC)-- Palestinians have held a massive funeral for nearly a dozen Palestinians martyred during an Israeli military raid on the city of Nablus in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

The mass funeral procession was held on Wednesday after the Tel Aviv regime's forces attacked Nablus, killing at least 11 Palestinians. The victims included a 72-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy and two commanders of the Palestinian resistance movement of the Islamic Jihad that is based in the Gaza Strip.  More than 100 others were also wounded, some critically, during the raid. 

The slain old Palestinian man's son said his father was on way to market when he was killed.  "In the morning, my father went out from the shop to buy some stuff.  Then the Israeli army raided the neighborhood, he called me and asked me if there are soldiers in the neighborhood so I told him yes, don't come back. They are surrounding the neighborhood from all sides," Ashraf said.

"Suddenly someone called me and said your father is injured. I was at my shop, besieged. I could leave the shop after the army left the city," he added.  During the raid, the occupying army blocked off all entrances to the city, reports said, before surrounding a home belonging to Palestinian resistance fighter, Hossam Isleem.

The West Bank-based Lions’ Den armed group said in a statement that it engaged in clashes with Israeli regime forces during the military raid, alongside the recently announced Balata Brigades group.   The Israeli regime has intensified its crackdown on Nablus and the nearby city of Jenin since late December when Benjamin Netanyahu staged a comeback as the regime's prime minister at the head of a cabinet of hard-right and ultra-Orthodox parties.

Late last month, Israeli forces shot and killed at least 10 Palestinians and wounded over a dozen others during a violent raid on the refugee camp that is adjacent to Jenin.  Sixty-one Palestinians, including gunmen and civilians, have been killed in 2023, the Palestinian health ministry said. 

On Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reacted to the escalation, asserting "incitement to violence is a dead end..." "The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is at its most combustible in years," he added.