Strike on café kills 18 in first Israeli airstrike on Tulkarm since Second Intifada

The Occupation launched a raid on Friday shortly after midnight on a popular café in the crowded Hamam neighborhood of Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank. 

At least 18 Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which stressed that a number of citizens were present in the area targeted. 

The café is located in a popular and crowded area, said the director of services at the camp, Faisal Salama, telling Mada Masr that despite the Occupation’s claim that the operation was targeting fighters, several of those killed were civilians in nearby homes. Salama said the airstrike on the camp is the first of its kind since the Second Intifada.

A medical source speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity confirmed that Zahi Yasser Abdel Razeq Oufi was among those killed in the attack, as was Ghaith Radwan. 

Oufi, a former prisoner, was considered the leader of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, in the camp, and was known by the nickname “Tufan,” according to the source. Radwan, meanwhile, was a commander in the Quds Brigade, the military wing of Fatah. 

Images and videos circulated on social media in the aftermath showing frantic Palestinians carrying injured loved ones as fire burned in the rubble at street level. Two bodies could be seen suspended on the ruptured structures of the targeted building after being blown into the air by the force of the explosion. 

The Health Ministry said that civil defense crews and paramedics rushed to the scene, after which those killed and wounded were transferred to the Martyr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital.

Tulkarm Governor Mostafa Taqatqa told the media that the strike also killed children in the family homes neighboring the café, calling on international and human rights bodies to take immediate and urgent action to put a stop to such crimes.

The Israeli military and the country’s International Security Academy published a joint statement shortly after the attack, calling it an “intelligence-based strike” on Oufi whom they described as the head of Hamas’s network in Tulkarm and claiming they “eliminated the terrorist.” The statement attributed to Oufi a planned car bombing in the settlement of Ateret that was thwarted by the Israeli military, among other “significant and extreme terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”

Hamas did not comment on those who were killed, but issued a statement denouncing the Occupation’s “policy of assassinations” and calling the attack a “dangerous escalation.” The group called on residents of the West Bank to protest en masse and escalate the confrontation with the Occupation and its settlers, adding that assassinations “will not succeed in dissuading our people from the choice of confrontation and resistance to the Occupation.”

The Palestinian National and Islamic forces in the West Bank announced a comprehensive strike on Friday to mourn the lives of the martyrs in what they called the first bombing of its kind to be launched by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the Second Intifada. 

Similar calls were made by Fatah, who urged citizens to escalate in protest to avenge those killed by the Occupation in Friday’s attacks. 

The city has been heavily targeted by the Occupation since October with assaults on both the Tulkarm and Nour Shams camps, where a number of Israeli military operations have killed citizens and caused widespread destruction of infrastructure. 

In April, a 50-hour Israeli raid destroyed facilities belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Nour Shams. 

Around 152 people had already been killed by Israeli forces in the governorate before Friday’s strike, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.