Agencies
West Bank/Gaza
The Israeli siege of the West Bank city of Jenin has left Palestinians with no food, water or electricity, with medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, accusing Israeli forces of obstructing access to health facilities and targeting ambulances.
“All basic necessities” including bread inside the refugee camp “no longer exist”, Taher al-Saadi, a resident of Jenin who managed to escape, told Al Jazeera.
Fayza Abu Jaafar, another resident who fled Jenin, said the situation is “very hard” for children still trapped in the area, as they are “terrified” of the destruction carried out by Israeli forces. The Israeli military brought in reinforcements on Sunday after demolishing shops and bulldozing streets, while preventing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians from accessing humanitarian aid, in a step described as a “war crime”. Israel has also been accused of war crimes during its ongoing military offensive in Gaza.
According to the Jenin municipality, the Israeli army has bulldozed nearly 70 percent of the city’s streets and 20km of its water and sewage networks since it launched its raids on Wednesday, August 28. As a result, 80 percent of the Jenin refugee camp, home to 20,000 people, is left without water access, the Jenin municipality said.
At least 24 Palestinians have been killed in a five-day Israeli assault that Al Jazeera correspondent Nida Ibrahim said was “the most destructive raid we’ve seen” in decades.
Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, has described the situation so far as similar to the 2002 Israeli destruction in which the camp was “flattened” and dozens were left dead.
Israel has killed at least 675 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7. During the same period, more than 10,300 Palestinians have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military has announced that its troops have recovered the bodies of six captives, including a dual US national, from a tunnel in southern Gaza, as it continued its 11-month long, deadly assault on the Palestinian enclave.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched war on Gaza on October 7 following an attack led by Palestinian group Hamas that left more than 1,100 people dead. The Palestinian fighters took about 250 captives in the wake of the attack.
The military said on Sunday that their remains were recovered “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area”.
