By Abdul Adil
(AA, Wafa, The Muslim News):
GAZA
A Palestinian was killed on Sunday evening by the bullets of the Israeli occupation forces in the town of Al-Shawka, east of Rafah city, south of the Gaza Strip.
WAFA correspondent said that local resident Salah Musa Al-Sufi was killed by the bullets fired by the occupation forces in the town of Al-Shawka.
He pointed out that Ranim Ahmed Shaat was killed due to her injuries after the occupation bombed her family’s house in Rafah during the attacks on the Gaza Strip, after the killing of her father.
Seven Palestinians, including a child, were injured Sunday in two Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip despite a ceasefire agreement in the enclave, a medical source said.
Witnesses said an Israeli drone struck a vehicle on the coastal Al-Rashid Road, west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Two more Palestinians were injured when a drone hit a bulldozer in al-Faraheen area, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the source added.
The attacks came hours after another Israeli drone fired two missiles near a cart traveling along the same road, but no injuries were reported.
According to witnesses, the strike caused panic among Palestinians using the road to return to areas in northern Gaza.
Israeli forces also opened fire towards Palestinian homes east of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza and in eastern Rafah in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, Palestinian medics recovered nine more bodies from under the rubble in Gaza, pushing the overall death toll from Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave since October 2023 to 47,498, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
A ministry statement said that four injured people were also admitted to hospitals in the last 24 hours, taking the number of the injured to 111,592 in the Israeli onslaught.
“Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” the ministry said.
He said the victims included 17,881 children, including 214 newborn babies.
“More than 38,000 Palestinian children were orphaned by the Israeli war,” Marouf said.
According to the local official, at least 1,155 medical personnel, 205 journalists, and 194 civil defense workers were also killed during the Israeli onslaught, which also damaged more than 450,000 housing units.
“More than 6,000 Palestinians were detained by the Israeli forces and dozens of them were tortured to death in detention,” he added.
“Over 2 million Palestinians were forcibly displaced, with many forced to relocate more than 25 times amid absence of essential services,” Salama said.
WEST BANK
An elderly Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Jenin on Sunday, the Health Ministry said.
A ministry statement said that a 73-year-old man was killed by Israeli army fire in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that its teams had transferred the victim to a hospital from the camp after the Israeli attack.
The official Palestine TV said that the elderly man was shot by an Israeli sniper as he was checking his house in the camp.
The new fatality came hours after five Palestinians were killed and three others injured in an Israeli airstrike in Jenin on Saturday evening.
On Jan. 21, the Israeli army launched a military assault on Jenin city and its refugee camp, killing at least 25 Palestinians. The offensive was later expanded to include the city of Tulkarm, where three Palestinians were killed.
The escalation in the West Bank came after a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal took hold in Gaza on Jan. 19, following 15 months of Israel’s genocidal war that killed over 47,400 and reduced the enclave to rubble.
A Palestinian freed in a prisoner swap deal with Israel last year was killed by an Israeli airstrike in the occupied West Bank, local reports said on Sunday.
Abdul Hadi Issam Alawneh lost his life in the attack that targeted a vehicle Saturday evening in the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, the Hamas-run Prisoners Media Office said in a statement.
Another Palestinian was killed in the Israeli attack.
Illegal Israeli settlers burnt a mosque northwest of Jericho city in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to a local activist.
Hasan Mleihat of the non-governmental Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights, said settlers also tried to torch a tractor in the Mleihat Bedouin community in the area.
“The mosque was completely burned down, but residents managed to stop the fire on the tractor,” he added.
Illegal settlers carried out over 2,970 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank in 2024, according to Palestinian figures. At least 10 Palestinians were killed and over 14,000 olive trees damaged in these attacks.
Nearly 770,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in 180 settlements and 256 outposts in the occupied West Bank.
At least 900 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 6,700 others injured by Israeli army fire in the West Bank since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Health Ministry.
The Israeli army launched a large-scale raid in the northern West Bank early Sunday amid tension in the occupied territory, witnesses said.
Israeli military vehicles and two bulldozers pushed into the town of Tammun, southeast of Tubas city, and Al-Far’a refugee camp and imposed a curfew in the two areas, they added.
According to witnesses, Israeli soldiers forced families out of their homes in Al-Far’a camp and turned the buildings into military outposts.
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa confirmed the Israeli raid in the two areas.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, for its part, accused Israeli forces of preventing its medics from evacuating a sick Palestinian in Al-Far’a camp.
Local authorities in Tubas announced a suspension of school classes in Tammun and Al-Far’a camp following the Israeli raid.
On Jan. 21, the Israeli army launched a military assault on Jenin city and its refugee camp, killing at least 24 Palestinians. The offensive was later expanded to include the city of Tulkarm, where three Palestinians were killed.
Israeli settlers pumped on Sunday night sewage water onto Palestinian-owned agricultural lands in Kisan village southeast of Bethlehem, according to a local official.
Ahmad Ghazal, the Secretary of the Fatah movement in Kisan, told WAFA that settlers from a nearby illegal outpost intentionally pumped sewage onto farmlands in the al-Tina area southeast of the said village.
Ghazal emphasized that this harmful act has become a frequent tactic by settlers, causing significant health hazards. It also prevents the landowners from cultivating crops such as wheat and barley and negatively affects livestock farming, he added.
Furthermore, the sewage discharge has resulted in the killing of three sheep.
Israeli occupation forces destroyed vegetable stalls in the middle of Tulkarm market on Sunday evening during their ongoing aggression on the city for seven days.
WAFA correspondent reported that the occupation forces deliberately destroyed a number of vegetable stalls located on the sidewalks, terrorizing their owners and trying to crush them.
Today, the occupation forces escalated their violations against civilians in the city and its camp, through a series of attacks that included raiding homes, expelling their owners, stealing their contents, blowing up and destroying a number of them, in addition to restricting movement.
Infantry forces were deployed in large numbers in various neighborhoods of the eastern, western and southern parts of the city, and in the middle of the vegetable market, obstructing the movement of citizens and vehicles, raiding various shops, and forcing their owners to close them at gunpoint.
They also continued the raids on homes, searching them, and checking the IDs of their owners in the aforementioned neighborhoods, while seizing commercial and residential buildings and turning them into military barracks and places for their snipers.
Israeli forces closed on Sunday evening a library in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, according to a brief statement issued by the Jerusalem Governorate.
The statement said that Israeli forces shut down the library, located in the historic Khan el-Zeit Market, under the pretext of selling “inciting materials” to the public.
Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories slammed Israel’s actions in the West Bank as “criminal.”
“The genocidal intent is evident in the way Israel targets the totality of the Palestinians,” she said in a post on X.
She pointed out that she had warned the UNGA about this in her last report in October 2024.
She added that the genocidal intent is evident in the way Israel targets the totality of the Palestinian people and the entirety of the occupied Palestinian territory, which Israel claims is exclusively designated for Jewish self-determination.
The UN official called on the international community to intervene and halt the ongoing destruction, which she stated has expanded to encompass all occupied territories, not just Gaza.
“It’s past the time to intervene to stop it.”
LEBANON
Hezbollah on Sunday announced that the funeral for it longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli attack last year, will take place on Feb. 23 in Beirut.
In a televised statement, Secretary General Naeem Qassem said Nasrallah “was martyred at a time when the conditions were difficult, and there was no possibility for a funeral.”
Nasrallah “was temporarily buried (due to security conditions), and we have now decided to hold a public funeral on Feb. 23,” he added.
Qassem said a funeral will also be held for Sayyid Hashem Safieddine, another senior Hezbollah official who was killed in an Israeli airstrike nearly a week after Nasrallah’s assassination.
He said Safieddine will be buried with the title of secretary-general, confirming for the first time that he had been elected as Nasrallah’s successor before being killed.
“Sayyid Hashem Safieddine will also be mourned as the secretary-general of the party, as four days after Nasrallah’s assassination, we elected Hashem as secretary-general, and we consider him martyred in that capacity,” Qassem said.
The Hezbollah chief said Nasrallah will be buried on the outskirts of Beirut “in a plot of land on the airport road,” while Safieddine will be laid to rest in his hometown of Deir Qanoun in southern Lebanon.
Nasrallah was assassinated by Israel on Sept. 27, 2024 in a series of airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Safieddine was targeted on Oct. 3.
[Photo: Thick smoke billows over the Jenin Refugee Camp as the Israeli army conducts attacks on the area in Jenin, West Bank on February 02, 2025. Following the cease-fire in Gaza on January 19, Israeli attacks targeted the northern West Bank, demolishing civilian homes in the Jenin Refugee Camp by planting explosives. Photojournalist: Stringer/AA]
