Pakistan strongly condemns Israeli raids, airstrikes in Jenin
A view of Foreign Office building in Islamabad. PHOTO: FILE
Pakistan on Wednesday strongly condemned the raids and airstrikes carried out by the Israeli occupation forces in Jenin in West Bank, which killed 10 Palestinians and injured 50 others, the Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement.
The statement added that this latest episode of violence against the people of Palestine by the occupying power “must end immediately”.
“Pakistan calls for the international community to assume its responsibility for bringing these brutal and illegal actions by the Israeli occupation forces to a halt and to ensure the protection of the human rights of the Palestinian people,” the statement said.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also condemned the “brutal” raids and airstrikes and called for the international community to “act now to stop this egregious spilling of Palestinian blood”.
Read Four children among 12 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes
“Strongly condemn brutal Israeli raids and airstrikes in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, killing 10 Palestinians and injuring 50. [The] international community must act now to stop this egregious spilling of Palestinian blood. I reiterate [the] strongest support for legitimate Palestinian cause and struggle,” he said.
A day earlier, Israeli forces killed ten Palestinians in a large-scale operation in the occupied West Bank in what the army labelled an "extensive counterterrorism effort" involving drone strikes and hundreds of troops.
The raid launched under Prime Minister Benjamin's hard-right government targeted the northern city of Jenin and was the biggest in the West Bank for years, featuring armoured vehicles, army bulldozers and drones.
Firefights and explosions rocked the city and adjacent refugee camp, a militant stronghold, as Palestinians threw rocks at soldiers and smoke from blasts and burning barricades darkened the sky, an AFP correspondent said.
Israeli-Palestinian violence has worsened since last year and escalated further under the Netanyahu coalition government that includes extreme-right allies.
The Jenin area is nominally controlled by President Mahmud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.
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Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.
Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it occupied in 1967 and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.
However, Netanyahu has pledged to "strengthen settlements" and expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, moribund since 2014.