The Israeli military said on Thursday its troops killed five Palestinian fighters holed up inside a mosque in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, in one of the biggest attacks on the occupied territory in months.
The operation, which a Reuters witness said was yet to end, began on Wednesday morning when hundreds of Israeli soldiers, supported by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers, raided the areas of Tulkaram, Jenin and the Jordan Valley.
The network of Jawwal, one of the two main telecoms companies in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, was also completely down, according to a Reuters witness.
Palestinian health officials said at least 12 Palestinians were killed in Wednesday’s operation.
Earlier in Jenin, bulldozers drove through empty, trash-strewn streets while the sound of drones filled the sky.
Israeli troops searched ambulances in the deserted streets of the city and in front of Jenin’s main hospital, and blocked access to it on Wednesday to prevent fighters from taking refuge there.
Israel said one of the five fighters killed at the Tulkaram mosque was Muhammad Jabbar, known as “Abu Shuja”, who headed a network of fighters in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city.
The Tulkaram Division of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said: “In response to the killing of our leader, our fighters succeeded in ambushing the infantry in the Manshiya area, behind the Abu Ubaida Mosque.”
The group claimed a “direct attack” on Israeli soldiers by detonating an explosive device near them.
The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions said in separate statements on Wednesday that their gunmen were bombing Israeli military vehicles in Jenin, Tulkarm and Fara, a town in the Jordan Valley.
Clashes in the West Bank have escalated since Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza began nearly 11 months ago.
Growing clashes
Israel says Iran provides arms and support to groups there and has increased its activities in the West Bank, while Jewish immigrants have carried out frequent vigilante-style attacks on Palestinian communities.
Referring to the latest attack on the West Bank, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X overnight: “This is a war in every sense of the word, and we must win it.”
He accused Iran of trying to destabilize Jordan and establish an eastern front against Israel, as it has done in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is in an almost daily exchange of fire with operatives of the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah.
To deal with the threat on the eastern front, Katz said Israel would have to use “all necessary means, including, in cases of intense war, allowing the temporary transfer of people from one area to another in order to prevent harm to civilians.”
In nearby Gaza, evacuation orders have displaced the territory’s approximately 2.3 million people multiple times, fuelling deadly hunger and disease.
The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian violence began on October 7, when Hamas launched an offensive from Gaza into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
Palestinian health officials say Israel’s Gaza campaign has since destroyed large parts of the territory and killed more than 40,500 people.
Internationally mediated talks are ongoing to end the conflict.
Since the start of the Gaza war, thousands of Palestinians have been arrested during raids in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and more than 660 fighters and civilians have been killed, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
At least 30 Israelis have been killed in attacks on Jerusalem and the West Bank during this period, according to Israeli figures.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
