Three Israelis, 64 Palestinians wounded in West Bank clashes

WEST BANK (AFP): Three Israelis and dozens of Palestinians were wounded in overnight clashes after militants fired on a Jewish pilgrimage to a shrine in the occupied West Bank, the army said Thursday.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated 64 injured Palestinians, most of them suffering from the effects of tear gas inhalation.

The Israeli army “escorted the entrance of hundreds of worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb in the city of Nablus. During the event, heavy fire was shot at the worshippers by Palestinian gunmen,” it said in a statement.

Two pilgrims and a commander of the army’s Shomron Brigade were injured, the statement said.

The tomb, which is believed by some to be the last resting place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, is a flashpoint for violence in the West Bank, and revered as a holy site by some Muslims.

The Israeli army provides security for monthly pilgrimages by Israelis. In May, a 16-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in clashes at the tomb.

The army said it had arrested 12 people in separate operations across the West Bank on Wednesday night, the latest raids in a crackdown triggered by intensifying violence.

Nineteen people — mostly Israeli civilians inside Israel — have been killed since late March, mainly in attacks by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

Israeli security forces have responded with near-daily raids in the West Bank.

Forty-eight Palestinians have been killed, mostly in the West Bank –- among them attackers and suspected militants but also non-combatants, including Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli army fire while covering a raid in Jenin, according to the United Nations. 

Three Israeli Arab attackers have also been killed since late March.