JENIN, February 3, 2018 (WAFA) – At least four Palestinians were on Saturday injured by Israeli forces‘ fire during a wide-scale offensive on the village of Burqin, to the west of Jenin in the northern West Bank, according to local sources.

Israeli military vehicles accompanied by bulldozers raided the village in the afternoon and stormed several homes using sniffer dogs, in an apparently continuing manhunt for Ahmad Nasr Jarrar. 

According to witnesses, the soldiers raided many homes in the eastern neighborhood of the village using attack dogs, and used loudspeakers to ask residents to leave their homes as well as to ask Jarrar to hand himself to the army.

Army then proceeded to demolish a room and an animal barn and also threatened to demolish more homes in the village. Clashes erupted with local teenagers during the offensive, during which three were injured by rubber-coated steel rounds and a fourth by live bullets. Two other local civilians were also moved to hospital with a nervous breakdown.

It is still unknown whether Jarrar himself was in the area of the offensive at the time it started.

Last night, army raided the village in addition to the village of Kfeir, to the southeast of Jenin, where they arrested five Palestinians, including three brothers from Jarrar family in Burqin.

The army used attack dogs in the search in both villages and residents in Kfeir reported that the dogs bit a man and his wife, who suffered injury in her hand. Army also used attack dogs in the arrest of the three Jarrar family members in Burqin, and one of them, Qasem Jarrar, was reportedly bitten hard and dragged by the dog in front of his children until he was pulled outside of the home.

Israel accuses Ahmad Nasr Jarrar of being behind the deadly attack of an Israeli settler last month. The city of Jenin and its villages have been a target for non-stop Israeli army raids since then.

M.N.