# Two women killed in Israeli raid on Nur Shams camp in the West Bank
*Event date: 2025-02-09*
Israeli forces killed two women during a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to Al Jazeera and Palestinian officials cited in the report.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Sondos Jamal Muhammad Shalabi, aged 23 and eight months pregnant, was killed after troops opened fire on a Palestinian family in the camp. Her husband was critically injured, and medical teams were unable to save the fetus because, the ministry said, Israeli forces prevented the couple from being transferred to a hospital.
In a separate statement, the ministry said 21-year-old Rahaf Fouad Abdullah al-Ashqar was also killed in her home. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, said the Israeli army raided the camp early on Sunday, deployed heavy machinery and bulldozers, and searched dozens of homes while reconnaissance aircraft flew low overhead.
The report said the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Tulkarem Battalion claimed it had thwarted an Israeli infiltration into the camp. The Palestine Red Crescent Society also said its medical teams were prevented from entering despite reports of casualties.
Israel said its operation targeted what it described as disruptive activity in the camp and imposed a curfew. The raid was part of a wider military campaign in the northern West Bank, where Israeli forces had been operating in Jenin, Tulkarem and Far’a.
The human cost of that campaign was growing. The source says more than 26,000 Palestinians had been displaced from Jenin and Tulkarem in the previous few weeks alone. It also says the tempo of attacks rose after the Gaza ceasefire announced the month before, with Israel increasing the frequency and intensity of operations across the West Bank.
The Nur Shams deaths illustrate the civilian toll of that escalation. One woman was killed in a family setting; another died in her own home. The report presents them not as combatants but as civilians caught in an expanding military operation.
Reporting from Amman, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the approach seen in Gaza was now being repeated in the West Bank, with Israeli leaders framing the campaign as counter-terrorism while Palestinian officials warned of displacement and destruction of infrastructure.
The immediate facts are stark: two women dead, a pregnant fetus lost, a husband critically injured, and a camp under curfew and military pressure. The broader question is whether the escalation across the West Bank will continue to deepen the displacement already underway.
For Nur Shams, the answer on this day was written in gunfire, destroyed access and grief.
