Malta's permanent representative to the United Nations has deplored the actions of Israeli soldiers in Khan Younis, south Gaza, who took a picture in the ruins of a bombed house along with a big poster reading “Only settlements [in Gaza] is victory.
Vanessa Frazier wrote in a tweet that this was a deplorable act by men in uniform whose duty is to curb settler violence and safeguard the rights of the Palestinians in the West Bank. She hoped that the IDF would investigate and discipline these military personnel.
While the war rages in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas, the West Bank has seen an increasing number of clashes between Palestinians, Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers.
On Thursday Israeli forces killed 11 people in a multi-day raid including a 17-year-old boy who the Palestinian Health Ministry said, was shot in the chest in Jenin.
Palestinian health officials said a sick 13-year-old boy also died after Israeli forces prevented him from reaching hospital.
Israeli troops launched their incursion into the northern city of Jenin and its refugee camp early Tuesday and were still present on Thursday afternoon.
The military said Wednesday that Israeli forces had seized dozens of weapons and dismantled multiple bomb-making laboratories.
Four soldiers were wounded in "controlled explosions" or by friendly fire, the army said Wednesday without commenting on the Palestinian casualties.
Speaking Thursday at the site where an Israeli drone strike killed three people, a resident told AFP the trio were unarmed civilians.
At a home damaged during the ongoing raid, a boy said Israeli soldiers stole money, gold and mobile phones.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and in recent months troops have carried out repeated deadly raids on Jenin, with the casualties including militants and children.
Jenin camp is home to more than 23,000 people, according to the United Nations, and militants have a strong presence there.
More than 280 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since the war in Gaza erupted on October 7, health officials say.
Over the same period, 18,787 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive on Gaza according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The war broke out with an attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel, which Israeli officials say killed around 1,200 people.
Frazier last month successfully piloted a Security Council resolution calling for pauses in the Gaza fighting to allow humanitarian aid in, and hostages out.
Earlier this week she was in a group of Security Council representatives who visited the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Hamas but they were stopped by Israel from visiting a hospital in Gaza.