At least 10 killed as Israel launches major raid on occupied West Bank

Israeli military deploys hundreds of soldiers, backed by jets and drones, targeting three areas simultaneously.

At least 10 Palestinians have been killed after Israel launched a large-scale ground and air attack on the northern part of the occupied West Bank, according to health officials in the territory.

The incursion, which began early on Wednesday, involved hundreds of ground soldiers supported by fighter aircraft, drones and bulldozers, targeting three areas simultaneously – Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas – in the largest assault in two decades.

The director of the ambulance department at the Palestine Red Crescent Society told media that Israeli forces killed four people in the Far’a refugee camp in Tubas.

The Red Crescent said its teams were having trouble reaching the injured because Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from entering the area.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said two people were killed in Jenin, while three others were slain when an Israeli drone struck their vehicle in the nearby village of Seir.

Another Palestinian was later reported to have been shot and killed in the village of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin, according to the Wafa news agency.

Reporting from Nablus in the West Bank, media’s Nida Ibrahim said that Israeli forces had described the operation in the north of the occupied territory as the biggest of its kind since 2002.

There are an estimated 80,000 Palestinians in the areas where the military operations are continuing.

Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, said that the incursion appeared to be part of a longer-term Israeli strategy to “ethnically cleanse” the Palestinian territory.

“I think the context of it is worth noting, which is the fact that Israel has been intending to annex and ethnically cleanse huge parts of the West Bank for a very, very long time,” Baddar told media.

Israel’s military described the nine people killed as “armed terrorists who posed a threat to security forces”. In a post on Telegram, it also claimed to have arrested more “wanted suspects” in Jenin and Tulkarem, while confiscating explosives “planted under roads” in the Far’a camp.

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz called for the army to evacuate Palestinians from the West Bank, in a post on X.

“We must deal with the threat in the West Bank as we are doing in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever other steps are required. This is a war for everything and we must win it,” he wrote on Wednesday.

‘Under threat’

Israeli forces have been closing down roads leading to Jenin, Tulkarem and the Far’a camp.

According to residents at the Nur Shams camp, in Tulkarem, they were given three hours to leave if they wanted to. “There’s no direct evacuation order, but this suggests a potential escalation,” Ibrahim reported.

But the Israeli military is likely to continue facing fierce resistance from a new generation of hardened fighters that are just as committed to protecting their homeland, without putting their hopes in the PA, Barari added.

Quoting Israeli military sources, Israeli media reported that the army was expected to continue the raids for several days.

Baddar said: “I think that they [Israeli forces] saw an opportunity given that the world is distracted by the horror that Israel is unleashing on Gaza to kind of escalate in the West Bank.”

In Jenin, the director of one of the city’s hospitals was told the Israeli army intended to raid the medical facility and ordered them to evacuate. The hospital has 200 employees and 150 patients.

Palestinian armed groups said they were fighting Israeli forces in the Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps.

The al-Quds Brigades said its “fighters targeted an enemy infantry force with a highly explosive device in Nur Shams”.

The Qassam Brigades said it “detonated locally made and highly explosive devices in Jenin against the invading military vehicles” and that its fighters were “engaged in violent clashes with the occupation forces”.

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza, Israeli army raids have become a nightly occurrence in towns and villages in the West Bank, with Israeli soldiers and settlers killing at least 646 Palestinians, including 148 children, and injuring more than 5,400, Palestinian health officials have said.

During this time, Israeli soldiers have arrested at least 10,200 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.