An ambulance driver from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society was killed while transporting Palestinians injured in an attack by settlers in the West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
In a separate incident the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) detained another ambulance crew at the entrance of the Thabet Thabet hospital in Tulkarm, West Bank, the PRCS reported.
In pictures shared by the organization, the ambulance crew is seen siting inside an IDF vehicle while surrounded by IDF soldiers. PRCS says the crew was detained and interrogated while trying to carry out “humanitarian work.”
Earlier on Saturday, the IDF said security forces had killed “10 terrorists” in an ongoing operation at the Nur Shams refugee camp, just East of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank.
It said in a statement that “IDF and Israel Border Police forces are continuing extensive counterterrorism activity in the area of Nur Shams. Thus far, the security forces eliminated 10 terrorists during encounters, apprehended eight wanted suspects, exposed explosive devices and routes, and conducted searches in structures.”
It said eight IDF soldiers and one Border Force officer were lightly or moderately injured.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health condemned both the detention of the ambulance crew and “the deliberate killing of an ambulance driver…on Saturday evening, while he was performing his humanitarian duty in transporting (people with) injuries from settler gunfire near the town of Al-Sawiya, south of Nablus.”
The ministry said in a statement that it “urgently calls on international health organizations, human rights institutions, and the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently act to curb the escalating practices of the occupation and settlers against treatment centers and medical crews, and to allow them to perform their humanitarian duty.”
“The targeting of medics, ambulances, treatment centers, medical staff, obstructing their movement, and preventing them from reaching the wounded, constitutes a blatant and clear violation of international humanitarian law and international norms and treaties,” the ministry said.