The Israeli military said Wednesday it was continuing what it called a new counterterrorism operation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Palestinian officials said at least 10 people had been killed.
An army spokeswoman said 10 militants were “hit” during the operation, without giving further details. Earlier, Israel said it had killed eight militants since the raid began. The Palestinian Health Ministry said 10 people had been killed in Jenin and its outskirts since the raid began.
At least four people were injured Wednesday in Jenin, where the new raids are concentrated, according to Palestinian officials cited by Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority. Other West Bank towns have also been targeted in raids.
The Palestinian Authority’s prisoners’ affairs committee said Israeli forces had arrested at least 25 Palestinians across the West Bank since Tuesday evening.
Heightened security at Israeli checkpoints across the territory has slowed or stopped traffic; In one case, a 45-year-old woman died at a checkpoint outside Hebron while waiting to be allowed to go to a hospital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
In Jenin, Mayor Mohammad Jarar told Wafa that Israeli forces detained up to 600 people overnight at the Jenin government hospital, but they were allowed to leave Wednesday morning. The news agency described Israeli bulldozers blocking the hospital gates with dirt from nearby streets.
Mahmoud al-Saadi, head of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, said evacuated patients were taken to a checkpoint to be searched and their ID cards checked before being allowed through. Some people were detained there, Mr. al-Saadi said.
“The situation is very difficult,” Muhammad al-Masri, a resident and former member of the local committee that administers the Jenin refugee camp, said in an interview Wednesday.
Mr. al-Masri said his family fled their home when the Israeli raid began because “there was no water or electricity.” He said Israeli forces divided parts of Jenin into blocs and began ordering residents in several of them to evacuate while the men were detained.
Mr. Jarar also said that people had been forced to leave their homes, a claim denied by Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli army spokesman. “There is no evacuation order in Jenin,” he said.
Briefing journalists about the operation, Colonel Shoshani said those hospitalized at the Jenin government hospital had been detained temporarily to ensure they would not be harmed by the explosives the army was detonating nearby. .
Since a temporary ceasefire was reached in Gaza over the weekend, Israel has turned its attention to the West Bank, where tensions have increased as militants have gained power and settler violence Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians have intensified.
Colonel Shoshani said the West Bank operation was similar in scale to that carried out by the army in August. The 10-day raid in Jenin killed 21 people, according to Palestinian media and residents. It was one of the largest and deadliest raids in the West Bank in years.
The colonel said the operation was Israel’s latest attempt to curb militant attacks, many of which involved improvised explosives placed under civilian streets and under Israeli military vehicles.
“Our strategy is to fight these terrorists while allowing the civilian population to continue to live,” Colonel Shoshani said.
The Jenin Battalion of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely affiliated with Fatah, the political faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, said in a statement on social media that its fighters were engaged in “clashes fierce” with Israeli forces in several neighborhoods of Jenin and detonated explosive devices.
A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Nebal Farsakh, said Israeli forces continue to “impose a tight siege on the Jenin camp and surrounding neighborhoods,” which has prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. Additionally, she added, the Israeli army fired warning shots at ambulances on Tuesday.
In a series of social media posts On Wednesday, Roland Friedrich, West Bank director of the United Nations agency that helps the Palestinians, said the Israeli operation “is expected to last several days” and was using advanced weapons on Jenin, including airstrikes.
