Israel launched a huge raid in Palestine today and used drone strikes on a refugee camp in its biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years.
At least eight Palestinians were killed and 28 injured in the attack but the death toll is expected to rise, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
In a separate incident, a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the ministry said.
A brigade of Israeli troops – usually around 1,000 to 2,000 soldiers – entered the city and it was the first time airstrikes had been used since the Second Intifada, around 20 years.
Pictures showed balaclava-clad armed men roaming the streets.
While Israel described the attack as a pinpoint operation to target militants, smoke was seen billowing from within crowded civilian areas.
Israel's foreign minister, Eli Cohen, praised the efforts of the military and accused Iran of being behind the violence by funding Palestinian militant groups.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that it launched an "extensive counterterrorism effort in the area of the city of Jenin and the Jenin Camp", striking "terrorist infrastructure."
But Palestinians reject these claims, saying the violence is a response to 56 years of occupation by Israel since it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the operation "a new war crime against our defenceless people."
Black smoke rose from the crowded streets of the Jenin refugee camp and residents said electricity was cut off in some parts.
Military bulldozers also ploughed through narrow streets, damaging buildings as they cleared the way for Israeli forces in another reminder of the last uprising.
Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent confrontation in Jenin and after the military said a pair of rockets were fired from the area last week.
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, part of more than a year-long spike in violence that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the area in nearly two decades.
Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the start of this year have killed 24 people.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.
The Jenin camp on the outskirts of the northern West Bank city was set up in the 1950s and is home to about 11,000 people. Palestinians see it as a centre of armed resistance, but Israelis view it as terrorism.
