AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Thousands of Palestinians have held a mass funeral ceremony in Jenin in the northern part of the occupied West Bank for seven Palestinian fighters killed by Israeli forces during a deadly siege on the city.
The ceremony was held on Friday, with mourners carrying the bodies of the victims toward their burial place.
"They destroy, we rebuild,” chanted those taking part in the funeral.
Israeli troopers have been enforcing the unprecedented siege for the past 10 days. Describing the siege, Jenin’s Governor Kamal Abu al-Rub called it a period of “harassment, suffering, and destruction of infrastructure."
"In the past, we have had many incursions and much destruction. But this has been the most destructive, the widest in devastation, and the most painful for the Palestinian people," he said.
At least 21 Palestinians, including children and the elderly, have been killed and 130 others wounded during the operation.
It came as part of heavily intensified Israeli aggression against the northern side of the West Bank, which has also targeted the Tulkarem and al-Faraa refugee camps as well as many other locations.
The escalation is the largest to target the territory since the early 2000s when the regime cracked down on Palestinians’ Second Intifada (Uprising).
Reacting to the intensified raids, the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has warned that the regime could be seeking to expand its October-present genocidal war on Gaza to the West Bank.
At least 40,878 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 94,454 others wounded in the war that was launched following a retaliatory operation staged by Gaza’s resistance groups.
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