Deadly Israeli raids in West Bank as Gaza war rages

Israel launched a large-scale operation Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, where the military said it killed Palestinian fighters, as the nearly 11-month-old Gaza war showed no signs of abating.

The military said its forces killed nine militants while the Palestinian health ministry reported 11 deaths in the West Bank, where violence has surged during the war sparked by Gaza rulers Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

Children were among those killed, according to the United Nations, while Hamas said the fatalities included three members of its armed wing in the Jenin refugee camp.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s health ministry, while Israel’s offensive has caused widespread destruction and displacement.

Early Wednesday, Israel launched coordinated raids across four northern West Bank cities -- Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem -- where the military has focused much of its recent operations.

Armoured columns entered two refugee camps, in Tulkarem and Tubas, as well as Jenin, where an AFP correspondent said gunfire and explosions were heard into the evening.

The Red Crescent said the Palestinian health authority claimed Israeli forces killed 11 people and wounded 24 in the raids. Its West Bank chief Younes al-Khatib said ambulances came under Israeli fire and “one of our staffers was hit”.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the Israeli operations took place “in close proximity to four hospitals” and at least some “have been surrounded”, affecting the movement of medical teams.

Guterres “calls for an immediate cessation of these operations,” a later statement from his office said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas cut short a visit to Saudi Arabia and headed home to “follow up on the latest developments”, Palestinian official media said.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II told visiting US lawmakers a Gaza truce was needed “to stop the cycle of violence in the region”, according to a royal statement.

Violence also raged in the Gaza Strip, where the civil defence agency reported Israeli strikes killed at least 12 people, and in Lebanon, where Israel’s military said it killed a “significant” Palestinian militant.

In the West Bank, Tulkarem Governor Mostafa Taqataqa told AFP the raids were “a dangerous signal and unprecedented”.

Tulkarem municipal worker Hakim Abu Safiyeh said Israeli forces “attacked the infrastructure, in particular in the city of Tulkarem and the Nur Shams camp” and “destroyed” water and sewage systems.

Israeli bulldozers dug up asphalt from the streets, with the army saying it was looking for roadside bombs.

Ahmed Zahran, from the Red Crescent, said that “medical teams have been hindered since the start of the assault”, with entrances to Nur Shams camp and hospitals closed.

The army reported no casualties on its side in exchanges with militants.

The military carries out daily raids in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, but it is rare for these to happen in multiple cities simultaneously.

Such incursions have intensified since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with far-right settler ministers took office in December 2022.

According to military spokesman Nadav Shoshani, Wednesday’s operation was not “extremely different” from regular activity.

But Foreign Minister Israel Katz called it “a war” aiming to “dismantle Iranian-Islamic terror infrastructure”.

Posting on social media platform X, he appealed for Israeli forces to act “with the same determination... (as) in Gaza, including temporary evacuation of residents.”

The vast majority of Gazans have been compelled to flee their homes.

The UN Human Rights Office said Israel’s raids risk “deepening the already catastrophic situation” in the West Bank.

Since 7 October, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 637 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to UN figures, and Palestinian attacks have killed at least 19 Israelis, officials say.

Washington on Wednesday announced sanctions on an Israeli settler group the State Department said was involved in violence against Palestinians and the forced displacement of some 250 villagers earlier this year.

Netanyahu’s office said he viewed the new sanctions “with utmost severity”.

Jordan, which borders the West Bank and Israel, called for international action to stop “the radicalism of this Israeli government”.

“Israel’s expansion of its war against Palestinians in the occupied WB is a dangerous escalation that must be stopped,” Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on X.

Hamas official Izzat Rishq saw it as a call to “expand the spiral of destruction and genocide”.

Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian movement allied with Hamas which has a strong presence in the northern West Bank, denounced an “open war” by Israel.

Israel’s military later said a strike in the Syria-Lebanon border area killed a “significant” Islamic Jihad operations officer. A Syrian war monitor reported four dead.

In Gaza, medical charity Doctors Without Borders said “nearly 650 patients have fled” the area around Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir el-Balah following Israeli evacuation orders.

Dujarric said Israeli forces shot at a UN humanitarian vehicle Tuesday, hitting it 10 times, even though it was “part of a convoy that had been fully coordinated” with the military.

An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment.

The UN’s World Food Programme said it was pausing its staff movements in Gaza “until further notice” after the “totally unacceptable” incident.

Hamas’s 7 October attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 people during the attack, 103 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 33 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,534 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Mediation seeking an end to the war continued in Qatar where an Israeli delegation was present Wednesday, said a source close to the negotiations.

In central Gaza’s Nuseirat, Samia Baker said the makeshift displacement camp she now lives in “is the street of death”.

“We have no water, the children have no food, no clothes, we have nothing,” she said. “We appeal to the world to help us get out of this place. Our children are dying.”