A Palestinian youth was killed by Israeli occupation forces in the southern West Bank

A young Palestinian man was killed by Israeli occupation forces at dawn on Saturday in the town of Beit Ummar, south of the West Bank.

The Palestinian government television announced "the martyrdom of the young man Ibrahim Zaaqiq (19 years old) from Beit Ummar after he was shot in the head by the occupation forces." The television indicated that the young man "is a freed prisoner, and was released about two weeks ago, and he is the only child of his family."

Before Palestine TV announced the news, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a brief statement that its ambulance crew dealt with “a very serious injury to a young man with live ammunition to the head, in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.”

Eyewitnesses reported that the Israeli occupation army "stormed the town and fired a barrage of live and rubber bullets and tear gas bombs, which led to serious injuries and suffocation cases."

Earlier on Friday, the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, reported that the young man, "Yamen Ahmed Asfour (22 years old) from the town of Araba, south of Jenin, was martyred this evening in Ibn Sina Hospital (in Jenin) due to the wounds he sustained from the occupation's bullets on January 17."

This brings the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation army to 578 since the escalation of its operations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, coinciding with its devastating war on Gaza that has been ongoing since October 7, in addition to about 5,350 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The war waged by Israel on Gaza with American support left more than 128,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children.

Tel Aviv continues the war, ignoring the two UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate halt to it, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.