20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry added that 241 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 were injured. Israeli forces killed two Palestinians on Tuesday in a raid on a refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The two — aged 17 and 31 — were shot dead in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, the ministry said. The army said it carried out a “counter-terrorism” operation in the town of Fawwar.
It said during the operation “assailants hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at Israeli security forces”. The forces “responded with riot dispersal means and live fire. Hits were identified,” the army added in a statement.
A resident from the camp told AFP that troops stormed the camp from its southern and northern entrances. “The two men were killed just outside their homes,” he said, asking to remain anonymous over security concerns.
He said after the death of the first man there were clashes in which five others were wounded and one of them later died. Violence across the West Bank has flared since the war between Israel and Hamas militants erupted in the Gaza Strip following an attack on Israel by the Islamist group on October 7.
That attack left around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, dead in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.
In Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza, 20,915 people have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
More than 300 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the Gaza war erupted, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah.