Israeli attacks, including air strikes on the Jenin refugee camp, have killed at least 12 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in one of the deadliest days in the territory in recent months, the Palestinian Health Ministry has said.
Five people were killed in the Jenin air raids on Tuesday while two were fatally shot by Israeli forces in Kafr Qud in the northern West Bank. One young man was also killed in Bethlehem, according to the health ministry.
Late on Monday, three men and one 14-year-old child were killed in the Tubas governorate in the northeast of the occupied territory, health officials have said.
Reporting from Jenin, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said Tuesday morning’s strikes in Jenin came after Israeli forces raided the area on Monday afternoon, targeting a money exchange shop and claiming it was linked to financing the group Hamas, which governs Gaza.
Ibrahim reported that an Israeli raid had prompted an armed confrontation in Aqqaba, near Tubas, on Monday.
“According to local sources, the Palestinians discovered an undercover Israeli unit that was surrounding one of the homes, leading to armed confrontations. Then, Israeli forces used force against Palestinians, some of them doing nothing, not participating,” she said.
Al Jazeera spoke to Mohaidden Abu Sbaih, a witness to one of the Israeli air attacks in Jenin, who said Israeli bulldozers showed up in the area, as warplanes appeared overhead.
Within five minutes, he said, the Israeli aircraft struck a building in the neighbourhood.
After the strike, community members located the remains of four people killed in the attack, he added.
“They are gangs,” said Abu Sbaih, referring to the Israeli military.
‘Assassination policy’
Fatah, the Palestinian group that leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, condemned the Israeli attacks, saying that “the bloody Israeli assassination policy” would not stop the Palestinian people from defending “their national rights”.
It said in a statement that the attacks on Jenin and Tubas confirm “beyond any doubt that the extremist occupation government seeks systematic escalation, with official American approval, support and bias, to implement its plans aimed at liquidating the rights of our people and displacing them”.
Fatah called on the international community “to play its role in immediately stopping the war of extermination” against the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli forces rounded up 16 people in the West Bank in the past day.
The arrests took place in the governorates of Hebron, Bethlehem, Tubas, Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Jericho and Qalqilya, it said in its latest update.
This brings the total number of Israeli arrests in the West Bank since October 7 to 9,970, said the group.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, 615 Palestinians, including 144 children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the outbreak of the war on Gaza.
