Zionist atrocity splatters Tulkarm refugee camp with blood, gore

Muhammad Amin

Israeli savagery has shown no hesitation in baring itself and its obscenities throughout the 363 days of Gaza genocide that has murdered over 41 788 people so far, but its latest air assault on the densely populated Tulkarm refugee camp’s impoverished occupants has left even hardened observers aghast.

It’s been described as the largest and deadliest single airstrike in the occupied West Bank for over 20 years. Surrounding hospitals have been overwhelmed by the massive influx of injured victims, most from an entire building that was flattened in the blast.

Paramedics are still struggling frantically to remove bodies from the rubble as they search hopefully for more survivors of Thursday’s attack.

The explosion, probably one of the United States’ notorious 2 000-pound bombs, obliterated a multi-level building and left a gruesome mess of body parts, blacked iron and concrete and a chaotic jumble of personal belonging strewn over a wide area.

Tulkarm refugee camp is home to more than 21 000 people crammed into a perimeter of only 0.18 square kilometres.

Al Jazeera reports the UN last month warned Israel had ramped up its military assault on the northern West Bank, leading to a “dangerous escalation”.

“The writing is on the wall, and we cannot continue to ignore it. There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control,” Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, said.

“Systematic aerial and ground attacks” in the areas of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas — and in refugee camps in particular — had intensified over the past few months, she warned.

Israel was  “targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion”, she said.

Some observers said it appeared that Israel was trying to batter the resistance in the West Bank into some sort of submission to allow it to concentrate its efforts on its Lebanon front.