Agencies
Tel Aviv/Ramallah
The Israeli military continued on Wednesday its major campaign across the restive West Bank city of Jenin.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said 10 people had been killed and at least 40 injured so far.
The military said that since the operation was launched on Tuesday, "over 10 terrorists” had been hit along with several "terror infrastructure sites.” Roadside bombs were also defused, it said.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Wednesday a new drone attack on Jenin, located in the north of the occupied West Bank and a stronghold of militants.
According to Palestinian accounts, Israeli forces have raided numerous houses near a refugee camp in Jenin.
While violence frequently flares in Jenin, this is Israel’s largest operation there in years. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the campaign, named Iron Wall, would be "extensive and significant.”
Tensions in the West Bank have long been high, but they dramatically escalated after the attacks carried out by the Palestinian Hamas in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting war in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. There is currently a six-week ceasefire in place in Gaza.
Operation Iron Wall was launched just hours after a group of Israeli settlers rampaged through two Palestinian villages, torching homes and vehicles and wounding more than 20 people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Hamas "condemned in the strongest terms the continued shedding of Palestinian blood at the hands of the Authority’s security forces in the West Bank”. The group said in a statement that Palestinian Authority (PA) forces laid siege to the Al-Razi Hospital and arrested wounded Palestinian fighters in a move that "crosses all red lines and national ethics”.
It called on "all factions and national and community figures in the West Bank to come out with all their strength in order to put an end to the serious violations of the Authority, and to confront the occupation’s aggression and targeting of the resistance fighters in Jenin, by escalating the clashes at all points of contact and at military checkpoints and settlements in the West Bank”.
In Gaza, as Palestinians return to their destroyed homes, the grisly search for dead family members continues. The civil defence agency and medical staff have recovered about 200 bodies since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect on Sunday.
Mahmoud Basal, head of the service, said extraction operations have been challenged by the lack of earth-moving and heavy machinery, adding Israel has destroyed several of their vehicles and killed at least 100 of their staff.
Basal estimates the bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians killed in the war are yet to be found and buried.