Israel’s military said Wednesday it was pushing ahead with what it called a new campaign against terrorism in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, and Palestinian officials said at least 10 people had been killed.
A military spokesman said 10 soldiers were “hit” in the operation, without giving further details. Earlier, Israel said it had killed eight soldiers since the attack began. The Ministry of Health in Palestine said that 10 people have been killed in Jenin and its suburbs since the attack began.
At least four people were wounded on Wednesday in Jenin, the focus of a new attack, according to Palestinian officials quoted by Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority. Other cities in the West Bank were also attacked.
The Palestinian Authority’s prisoner affairs commission said Israeli forces have arrested at least 25 Palestinians across the West Bank since Tuesday evening.
Enhanced security at Israeli checkpoints everywhere has slowed or stopped traffic; In another incident, a 45-year-old woman died at a checkpoint outside Hebron while waiting to be admitted to a hospital, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
In Jenin, Mayor Mohammad Jarar told Wafa that Israeli forces detained around 600 people overnight at Jenin’s government hospital, but they were allowed to leave on Wednesday morning. The news agency described the Israeli bulldozers that covered the hospital’s entrances with dirt on the nearby streets.
Mahmoud al-Saadi, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, said that the patients who had been evacuated were taken to a checkpoint to be searched and that their identity cards were checked before they were allowed to pass. Some people are detained there, said Mr al-Saadi.
“The situation is very difficult,” Muhammad al-Masri, a resident and former member of the local committee that runs the Jenin refugee camp, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Mr. al-Masri said his family fled their home when the Israeli attack began, because “there is no water and electricity.” He said the Israeli army divided parts of Jenin into blocks, and started ordering a few people to leave while the men were arrested.
Mr. Jarar also said that people were forced to leave their homes, a claim denied by Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military. “There is no order to leave Jenin,” he said.
Briefing journalists about the operation, Colonel Shoshani said that the people of the Jenin Governmental Hospital were kept for a while to ensure that they were not injured by the explosives that were being fired by the soldiers nearby.
Since a temporary cease-fire began in Gaza over the weekend, Israel has turned its attention to the West Bank, where tensions have risen as insurgents grow in strength and Israeli occupation violence against Palestinians.
Colonel Shoshani said the campaign in the West Bank is similar to the one the army carried out in August. That 10-day raid on Jenin killed 21 people, according to Palestinian media and civilians. It was one of the worst and deadliest attacks in the West Bank in years.
The colonel said the operation was Israel’s latest effort to stop terrorist attacks, most of which involved explosives planted under civilian roads and Israeli military vehicles.
“Our strategy is to fight those terrorists while making sure that the civilians continue their lives,” said Colonel Shoshani.
Jenin’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group loosely linked to Fatah, the political party that controls the Palestinian Authority, said in a statement on social media that its fighters had clashed with Israeli forces. several areas of Jenin and they had set off fireworks.
The spokesman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Nebal Farsakh, said that the Israeli forces continue to “tighten the siege of the Jenin camp and the surrounding areas” that have stopped ambulances from reaching the wounded. Additionally, he said, Israeli soldiers fired warning shots at ambulances on Tuesday.
In a series of social media on Wednesday, Roland Friedrich, the West Bank director of the United Nations aid to the Palestinian people, said that the Israeli operation was “expected to last days” and was using advanced weapons in Jenin, including airstrikes.
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