Israeli army kills 9 Palestinians in West Bank; About 3,000 escapes from refugee camp in Jenin
2 min read 04 Jul 2023, 06:48 AM ISTIsraeli army kills nine Palestinians in drone strikes in Jenin, West Bank, in extensive counterterrorism effort. Palestinians express outrage and concern.
PremiumIn one of the biggest operations in 20 years, the Israeli army killed roughly nine Palestinians in the occupied West Bank with drone strikes on Monday night.
The impromptu attack that targeted the northern city of Jenin was launched under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government and was labelled as an "extensive counterterrorism effort.
News agency AFP reported that around 3,000 had left their homes in the Jenin refugee camp since the start of the operation yesterday.
Firefights and explosions rocked the city and adjacent refugee camp, a militant stronghold home to about 18,000 people, as Palestinians threw rocks at soldiers and smoke from blasts and burning barricades darkened the sky.
Nine people were killed and 100 others wounded, 20 of them seriously, the Palestinian health ministry said -- exceeding the toll of seven dead in an Israeli raid in Jenin two weeks ago which saw the rare use of helicopter missile fire.
Netanyahu said in a statement that Israeli forces in "the nest of terrorists in Jenin" were "destroying command centres and seizing considerable weaponry".
The Palestinian foreign ministry called the escalation "an open war against the people of Jenin".
The army said soldiers and gunmen exchanged fire at a mosque in the Jenin camp and that weapons and explosives were later found in the building.
Israel had already stepped up operations in the northern West Bank, which has seen a recent spate of attacks on Israelis as well as Jewish settler violence against the Palestinians.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern about the violence and called for the respect of international humanitarian law.
What the Palestinians saying:
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said "All options are open to striking the enemy in response to its aggression in Jenin".
Israeli-Palestinian violence has worsened since last year and escalated further under the Netanyahu coalition government that includes extreme-right allies.
The Jenin area is nominally controlled by President Mahmud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.
In a separate incident, Israeli fire killed a Palestinian youth near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israel-Palestine issue:
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.
Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it seized in 1967 and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.
Netanyahu, however, has pledged to "strengthen settlements" and expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, moribund since 2014.
As per the data by the AFP news agency, at least 186 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian, and one Italian have been killed this year.
