Thousands of Palestinians gathered, on Friday, to bury the eighteen Palestinians, including at least three children, who were executed on Thursday night by an Israeli airstrike in the Tulkarem refugee camp, in Tulkarem city, in the northwestern part of the occupied West Bank.
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The slain Palestinians were identified as;
1. Ghaith Badi Radwan, 28,
2. Zahi Yasser Awfi, 40,
3. Ayman Khaled Tanji, 31,
4. Asem Noman Qawzah, 22,
5. Basil Mahmoud Nafeh, 18,
6. Anwar Mohammad Masimi, 35,
7. Ahmad Jamal Obeid, 35,
8. Saja Nasser Khrioush, 28,
9. Mahmoud Nasser Khrioush, 23,
10. Omar Nimr Fiat, 29,
11. Mohammad Salah Abu Zahra, 32,
12. Sham Mohammad Abu Zahra, 7,
13. Karam Mohammad Abu Zahra, 8,
14. Mohammad Mamoun Anbas, 16,
15. Rakan Bilal Awad,
16. Mohsen Ghazi Dabaia, 23,
17. Magdy Jamal Salem, 19, and
18. Athir Magdy Louisi, 28.
Media sources said that a large funeral procession commenced in front of the Martyr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital in Tulkarem city, while mourners marched through the streets carrying the bodies of the slain Palestinians on their shoulders.
Sources added that the mourners marched to the families’ homes in the Tulkarem refugee camp to pay their last respects, before performing the funeral prayer and burying 17 of the bodies in the Martyrs’ Cemetery in the Thnaba suburb, east of Tulkarem city, while the slain, Mohsen Ghazi Dabaia, was buried in the town of Attil, northeast of the city.
On Thursday night, occupation warplanes fired a missile at a popular café in the Al-Hamam neighborhood in the center of the Tulkarem refugee camp, killing eighteen and injuring many others.
Nimer Fayat, the owner of Dr. Coffee, told Al-Aribiya News that the targeted the café was full with “regular customers coming to eat and drink” when an Israeli fighter jet fired a missile at the building at 10:15 PM Thursday night.
Fayat said, “What happened was a very strong blow, the likes of which we had not seen in the past since the al-Aqsa Intifada,” referring to the second Intifada (uprising) which spanned from September of 2000 to February of 2005.
A relative of the Abu Zahra family, Yasser Jibra, told Al-Arabiya News that “This is the work of the criminal occupation, which does not take into account the presence of a child or a woman, or an elderly or young person,” adding that “Everything is permissible for them.”
Sham Khrewesh, a 3-year-old Palestinian girl, has been identified as one of the victims of the deadly Israeli massacre last night in the Tulkarm refugee camp. pic.twitter.com/EykOyCzXQc
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 4, 2024
In a joint statement with Shin Bet, the army claimed that the air strike targeted, Zahi Yasser Awfi, whom they claim was a “top Hamas commander in Tulkarem,” in addition to several other “operatives”.
The army accused of Awfi of planning and participating in multiple attacks against Israeli civilians, claiming that he was planning a major attack on the first anniversary of the Israeli military onslaught against the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
Since the beginning of the Israeli military onslaught against the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed 741 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 163 children, and injured 6,200.
The distribution of those killed in the West Bank is as follows; 196 in Jenin, 170 in Tulkarem, 75 in Nablus, 74 in Hebron, 59 in Ramallah, 57 in Tubas, 45 in Jerusalem, 29 in Qalqilia, 19 in Bethlehem, 12 in Jericho, 12 inside Israel, and 4 in Salfit.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed 41,788 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of whom are women and children, and injured 96,794 citizens, while the bodies of thousands of citizens remained buried under the rubble of the devastated coastal enclave.
