At least 10 Palestinians were killed Wednesday in Israeli raids and strikes in the occupied West Bank, the Red Crescent said, in what the army described as a “counterterrorism operation”.
Two Palestinians were killed in the city of Jenin, four others in a nearby village, and four more in a refugee camp near the town of Tubas, Red Crescent spokesman Ahmed Jibril told AFP.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X that the army was “operating in full force since last night” in refugee camps in the two cities “to dismantle Iranian-Islamic terror infrastructures established there.”
He said Iran was “working to establish an eastern front against Israel” in the West Bank, “following the Gaza and Lebanon model, by funding and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons from Jordan.”
He added: “We must address this threat with the same determination used against terror infrastructures in Gaza including temporary evacuation of residents and any necessary measures. This is a war, and we must win it.”
Violence in the West Bank has surged alongside the war in Gaza, with more than 650 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops and settlers since Hamas’s October 7 attack, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
But while Israeli military operations have become a daily occurrence in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, it is rare for them to be carried out in multiple cities simultaneously.
‘Open War’
The latest operation comes two days after Israel said it carried out an air strike on the West Bank that the Palestinian Authority reported killed five people.
The Israeli army confirmed the five deaths on Wednesday and said the strike hit a structure “used by the terrorists to conduct terrorist activity and harm (Israeli) soldiers operating in the area”.
Last week the army announced it had killed a senior Palestinian militant in Lebanon, accusing him of “directing attacks and smuggling weapons” to the West Bank and collaborating with Iranian forces.
Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian Islamist movement allied with Hamas which has a strong presence in the north of the West Bank, issued a statement early Wednesday denouncing an “open war” by Israel.
Hamas, whose popularity has soared in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, late Tuesday reiterated its call for Palestinians there to “rise up”.
With AFP
