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RAMALLAH: The Israeli army raided the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday, leaving 14 people wounded as troops fanned out across the city center, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
Tensions have remained high in the occupied West Bank since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war, with repeated raids by the Israeli army on Palestinian population centers, particularly in the north.
The Red Crescent said at least 14 people were wounded in the latest raid. Seven were hit by live rounds, while the rest were injured by rubber bullets or tear-gas inhalation.
It added that Israeli forces were “preventing our teams from reaching the injured in a besieged area.”
An AFP journalist saw soldiers on the ground around Al-Manara Square in the city center and on balconies overlooking it.
The Israeli army confirmed it had launched an operation in the area but did not provide more details.
Although the army has carried out frequent operations in the cities and refugee camps of the northern West Bank, it has done so relatively rarely in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinians were seen throwing stones at troops as they began the operation, which appeared to target currency exchange offices in particular.
Witnesses told AFP that the army withdrew in early afternoon.
Violence in the West Bank has intensified since the October 2023 attack. At least 972 Palestinians — including both militants and civilians — have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Authority figures.
In the same period, at least 36 Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, have been killed in attacks or military operations in the territory, according to Israeli figures.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians and 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.

DAMASCUS: An Israeli strike killed a man in southern Syria, state media reported Tuesday, with Damascus condemning the attack as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since an Islamist-led alliance toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December.
It has also opened talks with the interim authorities in Damascus.
“A young man was killed in an Israeli strike on a home in the village of Taranja,” on the formerly Syria-controlled side of the armistice line on the Golan Heights, the official SANA news agency reported.
Syria condemned “the recent Israeli attacks on its territory, which resulted in the martyrdom of a young man,” the foreign ministry said.
It also condemned the Israeli forces’ incursion into a town in the Quneitra countryside, their “arrest campaigns against civilians,” and their “announcement of the continuation of their illegal presence on the summit of Mount Hermon and the buffer zone.”
“These aggressive practices constitute a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, international law, and relevant Security Council resolutions, and constitute a direct threat to peace and security in the region.”
The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had carried out “several activities last week in southern Syria to locate weapons and apprehend suspects.”
The Saudi foreign ministry said the Israeli attacks were a “flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the sisterly Syrian Arab Republic and international law.”
The Qatari foreign ministry called on “the international community to take decisive action against the Israeli occupation and compel it to halt its repeated attacks on Syrian territory.”
Since Assad’s overthrow, Israel has occupied much of a UN-patrolled demilitarised zone on the formerly Syria-controlled side of the armistice line, including the summit of Mount Hermon, the region’s highest peak.
Last week, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani met Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in Paris to push for a return to the arrangements that had been in place since a 1974 disengagement agreement.