UN warns West Bank crisis ‘dramatically deteriorating’
International Desk
Volker Turk, the UN's human rights chief, on Tuesday warned that the situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is worsening dramatically amid the continuation of "unconscionable killings and sufferings" in the Gaza Strip.
“The situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is dramatically deteriorating,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
He said 528 Palestinians, 133 of them children, were killed by Israeli military forces or settlers from the start of the war on Gaza in October to 15 June, “in many cases raising serious concerns of unlawful killings”.
In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed in clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, including eight members of security forces, according to the UN’s high commissioner for human rights.
Two weeks ago, Turk said people in the West Bank were being “subjected to day after day of unprecedented bloodshed”.
He spoke as the Israeli military arrested at least five Palestinians during the storming of several towns and villages in Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported a settler attack on Palestinian farmland in the village of Yasuf, east of Salfit.
Overnight, Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians in Qusrah near Nablus, also in the West Bank, taking them to a school where they were held and interrogated, Wafa reported.
Source: Al Jazeera
