As Israeli Defense Forces troops moved into the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem camp early on Sunday morning following a tip about terrorists manufacturing explosives, a U.S. journalist and his cameraman were right on their heels.
“Right now the Palestinians are engaged in a gunfight inside the refugee camp,” reported Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst. “We’ve got to move quickly.”
Yingst described how roadside bombs impede the progress of Israeli forces, which use bulldozers to rip up roadways for this reason.
As the Israeli troops began making their way through the refugee camp, mosque loudspeakers blasted, alerting residents to their presence.
“Right now, the Israeli military is in a firefight with Palestinian militants in a refugee camp,” said Yingst, holding his hands to his ears as the shooting intensified. During the battle, the IDF killed two Palestinian fighters.
Yingst described how IDF soldiers moved from house to house clearing the people there as part of the night’s operation. At one point, under a civilian home, the troops located a room filled with IEDs and supplies for building them, and across the hall, through a booby-trapped doorway, they found extensive surveillance monitors.
That morning a controlled demolition destroyed the building and the Palestinians held funerals for those killed, one of whom was a Hamas jihadist.