Israeli forces detain 10 Palestinians, demolish 30 stores in West Bank raids

Israeli army forces detained at least 10 Palestinians and demolished 30 shops in military raids in the occupied West Bank on Monday, local media said.

The state news agency Wafa, citing local sources, said Israeli forces, backed by bulldozers, stormed a marketplace in the Beita town of Nablus in the northern West Bank at dawn, and razed 30 stores.

Witnesses told Anadolu that the demolition caused major financial losses, estimated at hundreds of thousands of shekels.

The market, known as Beita Hisbah, is the main market for residents in the northern and central West Bank, and employs nearly 400 workers.

Separately, illegal Israeli settlers raided a southern Nablus village and attacked residents, injuring one Palestinian and damaging properties, local sources said.

In the southern West Bank, Israeli forces detained five people, including a woman, in a military raid in Hebron and two others in Bethlehem.

A young Palestinian was also arrested in Ramallah, central West Bank, after his home was raided and searched by Israeli forces.

In the north, the Israeli army detained two other people from the towns of Qalqilya and Tubas.

Israel is currently holding around 10,800 Palestinians in its prisons, including about 450 children, 50 women, and 3,629 administrative detainees, according to official Palestinian figures. These numbers exclude thousands of cases of enforced disappearance of detainees from Gaza.

At least 1,016 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, demanding the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.