Explosive remnants of Syrian civil war pose a daunting challenge

Special Explosive remnants of Syrian civil war pose a daunting challenge
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An EOD team deals with a Russian-made 220mm Uragan thermobaric_rocket rocket found at a site in Luf village, Saraqib district of Idlib governorate in Syria. (The HALO Trust photo)
Special Explosive remnants of Syrian civil war pose a daunting challenge
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Updated 03 February 2025
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Explosive remnants of Syrian civil war pose a daunting challenge

Explosive remnants of Syrian civil war pose a daunting challenge
  • Unexploded ordnance and landmines threaten civilians, with children most at risk of death or injury
  • As displaced Syrians return, accidents are expected to rise due to inadequate clearance, experts warn

LONDON: The sudden fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in early December prompted around 200,000 Syrians to return to their war-ravaged homeland, despite the widespread devastation. But the land they have come to reclaim harbors a deadly threat.

Almost 14 years of civil war contaminated swathes of the Syrian Arab Republic with roughly 324,600 unexploded rockets and bombs and thousands of landmines, according to a 2023 estimate by the US-based Carter Center.

In the last four years alone, the Syrian Arab Republic has recorded more casualties resulting from unexploded ordnance than any other country, yet no nationwide survey of minefields or former battlefields has been conducted, according to The HALO Trust.

Those explosives have maimed or killed at least 350 civilians across the Syrian Arab Republic since the Assad regime fell on Dec. 8, Paul McCann, a spokesperson for the Scotland-based landmine awareness and clearance charity, told Arab News.

The actual toll, however, is likely much higher. “We think that’s an undercount because large areas of the country have no access or monitoring, particularly in the east,” he added.

Children bear the brunt of these hidden killers.

Ted Chaiban, deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations at the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, warned that explosive debris is the leading cause of child casualties in Syria, killing or injuring at least 116 in December alone.

According to McCann, the bulk of the documented incidents involving landmines and unexploded ordnance took place in Idlib province, north of Aleppo, and Deir Ezzor, where intense battles between regime forces and opposition groups had occurred.

“There is a long frontline — maybe several hundred kilometers — running through parts of Latakia, Idlib, and up to north of Aleppo, where the government was on one side, and they built large earthen barriers,” he said.

“They used bulldozers to push up big walls and dig trenches, and in front of their military positions they put a lot of minefields.”

McCann said the exact number of landmines, across the Syrian Arab Republic and in the northwest specifically, remains unknown. “We don’t know exactly how many, because there hasn’t been a national survey,” he said.

After the regime’s forces withdrew from these areas, locals discovered maps detailing the location of dozens of minefields. Although it will take time and resources to clear these explosives, such maps make containment far easier.

“There was a battalion command post, and when the troops left, local residents went in and found some maps of local minefields,” McCann said. “So, for that one area, we’ve discovered there were 40 minefields, but this could be repeated up and down this line for all the different military positions.”

Landmines planted systemically by warring parties are not the only threat. HALO reported “huge amounts of explosive contamination anywhere that there might have been a battle or been any kind of fighting.”

One such area is Saraqib, east of Idlib. The northwestern city endured a major battle in 2013, fell to rebel forces, was recaptured by the Syrian Army in 2020, and was then seized during the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham-led offensive on Nov. 30.

“The city was fought over by the government and multiple different opposition groups, who sometimes fought each other,” McCann said. “And in a big spread south of there, there are dozens of villages that we’ve been through which are contaminated with explosives.”

The Carter Center warned in a report published in February 2024 that the “scale of the problem is so large that there is no way any single actor can address it.”

Since Assad’s ouster, HALO has seen a 10-fold surge in calls to its emergency hotline in areas near the Turkish border where it operates.

“Every time our teams dispose of a piece of ordnance… people hear the explosion and they come running to say, ‘I found something in my house’ or ‘I found something on my land, can you come and have a look? Can you come and take care of that?” McCann said.

“We are hoping to be able to increase the size of the program as quickly as possible to deal with the demand.”

As the only mine clearance operator in northwest Syria, HALO is struggling to keep up with surging demand. With funding for only 40 deminers, the organization is desperately understaffed, HALO’s Syrian Arab Republic program manager Damian O’Brien said in a statement. 

HALO urgently needs emergency funding “to help bring the Syrian people home to safety,” he said. “Clearing the debris of war is fundamental to getting the country back on its feet,” he added.

The urgency of clearing unexploded ordnance in Syria has grown as displaced communities, often unaware of those hidden dangers, rush to return home and rebuild their lives.

“One of the problems we’re finding is the people are coming back now,” McCann said. “They want to plant the land for spring. They want to start getting the land ready because they’re going to need the income to rebuild.

“Millions of homes have been either destroyed by fighting, or they’ve been destroyed by the regime that stripped out the windows and the doors and the roofs and the copper pipes and the wiring to sell for scrap.”

The war in the Syrian Arab Republic created one of the largest displacement crises in the world, with more than 13 million forcibly displaced, according to UN figures. With Assad’s fall, hundreds of thousands returned from internal displacement and neighboring countries.

And as host countries, including Turkiye, Lebanon and Jordan, push to repatriate Syrian refugees, UNICEF’s Chaiban warned in January that “safe return cannot be achieved without intensified humanitarian demining efforts.”

HALO’s O’Brien warned in December that “returning Syrians simply don’t know where the landmines are lying in wait. They are scattered across fields, villages and towns, so people are horribly vulnerable.”

He added: “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Tens of thousands of people are passing through heavily mined areas on a daily basis, causing unnecessary fatal accidents.”

Unless addressed, these hidden killers will impact multiple generations of Syrians, causing the loss of countless lives and limbs long after the conflict has ended, the Carter Center warned.

Economic development will also be disrupted, particularly in urban reconstruction and agriculture. Environmental degradation is another concern. As munitions break down, they leach chemicals into the soil and groundwater.

But safely demining an area is costly and securing adequate funding has been a challenge. Mouiad Alnofaly, HALO’s senior operations officer in the Syrian Arab Republic, said disposal operations could cost $40 million per year.




Remnants from a ShOAB-0.5 submunition that struck Jisr al-Shughour in Saraqib, Idlib, Syria, on July 22, 2016, killing 12 and injuring dozens. (HRW photo)

Faced with these limitations, locals eager to cultivate their farmland are turning to unofficial solutions, hiring amateurs who are not trained to international standards, resulting in more casualties, McCann warned.

“People are returning and trying to plant, and so we’re hearing reports that they’re hiring ex-military personnel with metal detectors to do some sort of clearance of their land, but it’s not systematic or professional,” he said.

“I met a man a few days ago who said his neighbor had hired an ex-soldier with a metal detector to find the mines on his land. The man (ex-soldier) was killed straight away, and the neighbor was injured.”

McCann emphasized that a field cannot be considered safe until every piece of explosive debris and every landmine has been removed.




Unexploded munitions dug up by farmers at a field in Syria. (The HALO Trust photo)

“If there are 50 mines in a field, and somebody finds 49 of them, the field still cannot be used,” he said. “You can only hand back land when you are 100 percent confident that every single mine is gone.

“So, even in places where some people are removing mines, we don’t know if all of them have been cleared, and we’ll have to do clearance again in the future.”

Although the northwest of the Syrian Arab Republic is riddled with unexploded ordnance, locals remain resolute in their determination to stay and rebuild their lives — a decision that is likely to lead to an increase in accidents.

“We think the number of accidents will increase because a lot of people don’t want to leave their displaced communities in Idlib in the winter,” McCann said. “They’re waiting for the weather to improve.”




Unexploded 220mm Uragan rocket found in the village of Lof near Saraqib, Idlib governorate. (The HALO Trust photo)

In the village of Lof near Saraqib, one resident HALO encountered returned to work on his land just hours after the charity’s team had neutralized an unexploded 220mm Uragan rocket. Had it detonated, it would have devastated the village.

“We took the rocket, dug a big hole, and evacuated the whole village,” McCann said. “We used an armored front loader to take it to this demolition site in the countryside.

“By the time we came back to the village, the landowner had started to rebuild his house where the rocket had been. He couldn’t touch it (before), and the rocket had been there probably since 2021.

“But within three or four hours of us removing the rocket, he had started to rebuild.”




Remnants from a ShOAB-0.5 submunition that struck Jisr al-Shughour, killing 12 and injuring dozens. (HRW photo)

Among the most common unexploded ordnance found in the northwest Syrian Arab Republic are TM-62 Russian anti-tank mines and ShOAB-0.5 cluster bombs.

Despite HALO’s 35 years of work in safely clearing explosive remnants of war, the scale of the problem, compounded by a lack of adequate resources, remains a significant challenge.

“To cover the whole country, there will have to be thousands of Syrians trained and employed by HALO over many years,” said program manager O’Brien.

And until international and local efforts are effectively coordinated to neutralize this deadly threat, the lives of countless civilians, particularly children, will continue to be at risk.
 

 


Trump repeats pledge to take control of Gaza even as pressure mounts to renew ceasefire

Trump repeats pledge to take control of Gaza even as pressure mounts to renew ceasefire
Updated 59 min 42 sec ago
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Trump repeats pledge to take control of Gaza even as pressure mounts to renew ceasefire

Trump repeats pledge to take control of Gaza even as pressure mounts to renew ceasefire
  • “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it,” Trump said
  • He said Arab nations would agree to take in Palestinians after speaking with him and insisted Palestinians would leave Gaza if they had a choice

MUGHRAQA, Gaza Strip: New details and growing shock over emaciated hostages renewed pressure Sunday on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend a fragile Gaza ceasefire beyond the first phase, even as US President Donald Trump repeated his pledge that the US would take control of the Palestinian enclave.
Talks on the second phase, meant to see more hostages released and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, were due to start Feb. 3. But Israel and Hamas appear to have made little progress, even as Israeli forces withdrew Sunday from a Gaza corridor in the latest commitment to the truce.
Netanyahu sent a delegation to Qatar, a key mediator, but it included low-level officials, sparking speculation that it won’t lead to a breakthrough. Netanyahu, who returned after a US visit to meet with Trump, is expected to convene security Cabinet ministers on Tuesday.
Trump weighs in on Gaza again
Speaking on Sunday, Trump repeated his pledge to take control of the Gaza Strip.
“I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it. Other people may do it through our auspices. But we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back. There’s nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished,” he told reporters onboard Air Force One as he traveled to the Super Bowl.
Trump said Arab nations would agree to take in Palestinians after speaking with him and insisted Palestinians would leave Gaza if they had a choice.
“They don’t want to return to Gaza. If we could give them a home in a safer area — the only reason they’re talking about returning to Gaza is they don’t have an alternative. When they have an alternative, they don’t want to return to Gaza.”
Trump also suggested he was losing patience with the deal after seeing the emaciated hostages released this week.
“I watched the hostages come back today and they looked like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition. They were emaciated. It looked like many years ago, the Holocaust survivors, and I don’t know how much longer we can take that,” he said.
Israel has expressed openness to the idea of resettling Gaza’s population — ”a revolutionary, creative vision,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday — while Hamas, the Palestinians and much of the world have rejected it.
Egypt said it will host an emergency Arab summit on Feb. 27 to discuss the “new and dangerous developments.”
Trump’s proposal has moral, legal and practical obstacles. It may have been proposed as a negotiation tactic to pressure Hamas or an opening gambit in discussions aimed at securing a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia condemned Netanyahu’s recent comment that Palestinians could create their state there, saying it aimed to divert attention from crimes committed by “the Israeli occupation against our Palestinian brothers in Gaza, including the ethnic cleansing they are being subjected to.”
Qatar called Netanyahu’s comment “provocative” and a blatant violation of international law.
Hostage families say time is running out
Families of remaining hostages said time is running out as some survivors described being barefoot and in chains.
“We cannot let the hostages remain there. There is no other way. I am appealing to the cabinet,” said Ella Ben Ami, daughter of a hostage released Saturday, adding she now understands the toll of captivity is much worse than imagined.
The father of a remaining hostage, Kobi Ohel, told Israel’s Channel 13 the newly released men said his son, Alon, and others “live off half a pita to a full pita a day. These are not human conditions.” Ohel’s mother, Idit, sobbed as she told Channel 12 her son has been chained for over a year.
Michael Levy said his brother, the newly released Or Levy, had been barefoot and hungry for 16 months. “The decision-makers knew exactly what his condition was and what everyone else’s condition was, and they did not do enough to bring him back with the urgency that was needed,” he said.
On Saturday, as Israelis reeled, former defense minister Yoav Gallant said on social media that the deterioration in hostages’ conditions was something “Israel has known about for some time.”
The ceasefire’s extension is not guaranteed
The ceasefire that began on Jan. 19 has held, raising hopes that the 16-month war that led to seismic shifts in the Middle East may be headed toward an end.
The latest step was Israel forces’ withdrawal from the 4-mile (6-kilometer) Netzarim corridor separating northern and southern Gaza, which was used as a military zone. No troops were seen in the vicinity Sunday. As the ceasefire began last month, Israel began allowing hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to cross Netzarim and return to the north.
But the deal remains fragile. On Sunday, civil defense first responders in Gaza said Israeli fire killed three people east of Gaza City. Israel’s military noted “several hits” after firing warning shots and warned Palestinians against approaching its forces.
Cars piled with belongings headed north. Under the deal, Israel should allow cars to cross Netzarim uninspected. Troops remain along Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt.
Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif Al-Qanoua said the troops’ withdrawal showed the militant group had “forced the enemy to submit to our demands” and thwarted “Netanyahu’s illusion of achieving total victory.”
Israel has said it won’t agree to a complete withdrawal from Gaza until Hamas’ military and political capabilities are eliminated. Hamas says it won’t hand over the last hostages until Israel removes all troops.
During the ceasefire’s 42-day first phase, Hamas is gradually releasing 33 Israeli hostages captured during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and a flood of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Israel has said Hamas confirmed that eight of the 33 are dead.
Families of the hostages gathered in Tel Aviv to urge Netanyahu to extend the ceasefire, but he is also under pressure from far-right political allies to resume the war. Trump’s proposal for the US to take control of the Gaza Strip may also complicate the situation.
“They are dying there, so we need to finish this deal in a hurry,” said Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of hostage Yoram Metzger, who died in captivity.
The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’ attack that killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not differentiate between fighters and noncombatants in their count. Much of the territory has been obliterated.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
Violence has surged in the occupied West Bank during the war and intensified in recent days with an Israeli military operation against Palestinian militants in the territory’s north.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli gunfire killed two women, one of them, Sundus Shalabi, eight months pregnant. It said Rahaf Al-Ashqar, 21, was also killed. The shooting occurred in the Nur Shams urban refugee camp, a focal point of Israeli operations.
Israel’s military said its police had opened an investigation.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday announced the expansion of the operation that started in Jenin several weeks ago. He said it was meant to prevent Iran — allied with Hamas — from establishing a foothold in the West Bank.
 


Israel’s Netanyahu says Trump plan for Gaza ‘revolutionary’

Israel’s Netanyahu says Trump plan for Gaza ‘revolutionary’
Updated 10 February 2025
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Israel’s Netanyahu says Trump plan for Gaza ‘revolutionary’

Israel’s Netanyahu says Trump plan for Gaza ‘revolutionary’
  • Washington on Friday announced the approval of the sale of more than $7.4 billion in bombs, missiles and related equipment to Israel

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday praised a proposal from President Donald Trump for US control of Gaza and the displacement of its population as “revolutionary,” following his return to Israel from Washington.
Trump sparked global outrage by suggesting on Tuesday, during a week-long visit by the Israeli premier to the United States, that Washington should take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants.
On his return to Israel, addressing his cabinet, Netanyahu said the two allies agreed on war aims set out by Israel at the start of its 15-month war against Hamas including “ensuring Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”
“President Trump came with a completely different, much better vision for Israel — a revolutionary, creative approach that we are currently discussing” the Israeli prime minister said, referring to the president’s Gaza plan.
“He is very determined to implement it and I believe it opens up many, many possibilities for us,” Netanyahu added.
Despite criticisms from international allies and Arab states in particular, Trump on Thursday doubled down on the plan, saying the “Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.”
“No soldiers by the US would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!!!” he wrote in social media post.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz later on Thursday ordered the army to prepare for “voluntary” departures from Gaza.
“This visit, and the discussions we had with President Trump, carry with them tremendous achievements that could ensure Israel’s security for generations,” Netanyahu said.
Washington on Friday announced the approval of the sale of more than $7.4 billion in bombs, missiles and related equipment to Israel.
The State Department signed off on the sale of $6.75 billion in bombs, guidance kits and fuses, in addition to $660 million in Hellfire missiles, according to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA).
Israel launched a hugely destructive offensive against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023 in response to the Palestinian militant groups October 7 attack.
The war has devastated much of the Gaza Strip — a narrow coastal territory on the eastern Mediterranean — but a ceasefire has been in effect since last month that has brought a halt to the deadly conflict and provides for the release of hostages seized by Hamas.


UN chief welcomes formation of new Lebanon government

UN chief welcomes formation of new Lebanon government
Updated 10 February 2025
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UN chief welcomes formation of new Lebanon government

UN chief welcomes formation of new Lebanon government
  • New Prime Minister Nawaf Salam now faces the daunting task of overseeing the fragile Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire and rebuilding the country

UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN chief Antonio Guterres has welcomed the formation of a new government in Lebanon, affirming the international body’s commitment to that country’s “territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence,” a spokesman said Sunday.
“The United Nations looks forward to working in close partnership with the new government on its priorities, including the consolidation of the cessation of hostilities,” said a statement from spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Dujarric was referring to a ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel signed on November 27, with Beirut’s military due to deploy in the country’s south alongside UN peacekeepers as Israel withdraws from those areas over 60 days.
Fighting between Israeli forces and long-dominant Hezbollah since October 2023 has weakened the group, helping bring a new Lebanese government to power after almost two years of caretaker authorities being in charge.
New Prime Minister Nawaf Salam now faces the daunting task of overseeing the fragile Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire and rebuilding the country.
Salam said Saturday that he hoped to head a “government of reform and salvation,” pledging to rebuild trust with the international community after years of economic collapse blamed on corruption and mismanagement.
Long the dominant force in Lebanese politics, Hezbollah suffered staggering losses in a war with Israel that saw its leader Hassan Nasrallah killed in a massive air strike in September.
Hezbollah suffered another seismic blow with the ouster on December 8 of Bashar Assad in Syria, which it had long used as its weapons lifeline from Iran.
After more than two years of political stalemate, the weakening of Hezbollah allowed former army chief Joseph Aoun, widely believed to be Washington’s preferred candidate, to be elected president and Salam approved as his premier.
 

 


Brother says freed Israeli hostage suffered ‘hardest blow’ learning wife killed

Brother says freed Israeli hostage suffered ‘hardest blow’ learning wife killed
Updated 10 February 2025
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Brother says freed Israeli hostage suffered ‘hardest blow’ learning wife killed

Brother says freed Israeli hostage suffered ‘hardest blow’ learning wife killed
  • “Einav, his beloved wife, was murdered on that cursed day

JERUSALEM: Freed Israeli hostage Or Levy suffered the “hardest blow” upon his release from Gaza when he learned that his wife was killed by Hamas militants in the 2023 attack in which he was abducted, his brother said Sunday.
On Saturday, Hamas militants released Levy along with two other hostages, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami, as part of an ongoing ceasefire in Gaza.
“The hardest blow awaited Or when he was freed — his greatest fear was confirmed,” Michael Levy told journalists at a hospital where his brother is being treated.
“Einav, his beloved wife, was murdered on that cursed day. For 491 days, he held on to the hope that he would return to her. For 491 days, he didn’t know she was no longer alive,” Michael Levy added.
Or and Einav Levy had attended the Nova music festival when Hamas militants stormed it during their October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
They had left their son Almog, two years old at the time, with his grandparents.
The usually inseparable couple, who met at school, tried to hide from the attackers along Route 232, the only path away from the festival.
According to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an Israeli campaign group, Einav was killed in the attack while Or was abducted along with other young men.
Until now, it had been unclear whether Or knew of his wife’s fate.
“He only found out yesterday,” said Michael Levy.
“Or is alive. He is here. But this happiness is mixed with an immense sadness, a pain that cannot be described.”
“After everything he went through, he finally met Mogi, his little son. A three-year-old boy who hadn’t seen his father for 16 months!” the brother added.
 

 


Palestinians say Israeli forces kill 3 in West Bank raid

Israeli soldiers conduct a raid in the Nur Shams camp for Palestinian refugees near Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli soldiers conduct a raid in the Nur Shams camp for Palestinian refugees near Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.
Updated 10 February 2025
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Palestinians say Israeli forces kill 3 in West Bank raid

Israeli soldiers conduct a raid in the Nur Shams camp for Palestinian refugees near Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.
  • A pregnant woman was dead when she arrived at a local hospital
  • At least 70 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank in 2025

TULKAREM: The Palestinian health ministry reported that Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank shot dead three people on Sunday, including a woman who was eight months pregnant.
Israeli forces launched an operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, at dawn on Sunday, as part of an ongoing offensive in nearby camps, the military said.
The Palestinian health ministry said 23-year-old Sundus Jamal Muhammad Shalabi was killed in a pre-dawn incident, with her husband Yazan Abu Shola critically injured.
The mother-to-be was dead when she arrived at a local hospital, the ministry said.
“Medical teams were unable to save the baby’s life due to the (Israeli) occupation preventing the transfer of the injured to the hospital,” it added.
When asked by AFP about the shooting of the pregnant woman in Nur Shams, the Israeli military said “following the incident an investigation was opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division."
Murad Alyan, a member of the popular committee in the Nur Shams camp, told AFP that the couple was “trying to leave the camp before the occupation forces advanced into it. They were shot while they were inside their car.”
The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned what it described as “a crime of execution committed by the occupation forces,” accusing Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting defenseless civilians.”
The health ministry later said a second woman, 21-year-old Rahaf Fouad Abdullah Al-Ashqar was killed in a separate incident in Nur Shams.
A source in the camp’s popular committee said she was killed and her father wounded when the “Israeli forces used explosives to open the door of their family house.”
And late on Sunday the health ministry announced that a third Palestinian, Iyas Adli Fakhri Al-Akhras, 20, had been killed “after being shot by Israeli forces” in the camp.
AFP footage from Nur Shams showed army bulldozers clearing a path in front of buildings in the densely packed camp, which is home to about 13,000 people.
The Israeli military earlier said its forces were “expanding the operation in northern Samaria,” using the biblical term for the north of the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
“The combat team of the Ephraim Brigade began operations in Nur Shams,” the military said in a statement, adding that soldiers had “targeted several terrorists and arrested additional individuals in the area.”
The Palestinian health ministry has said at least 70 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank this year.
Violence there has escalated since the October 2023 outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 887 Palestinians including militants have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza war began.
At least 32 Israelis, including some soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or confrontations during Israeli operations in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.