Four killed as Israel’s large-scale raids on West Bank enter third week

Israeli forces kill three Palestinians in Tulkarem and another in Far’a as military operation in West Bank continues.

Israeli forces have killed at least four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to media reports, as Israel’s biggest military operation in the Palestinian territory since the early 2000s entered its third week.

The Wafa news agency reported three people were killed in a drone attack on a vehicle in the city of Tulkarem on Wednesday evening while another was killed by an Israeli sniper in the Far’a refugee camp, near the city of Tubas.

The Israeli drone attack on Tulkarem set fire to the vehicle as well as a nearby home, Wafa reported.

And in Far’a, the Israeli sniper killed 46-year-old Sufyan Jawad Fayez Abdul Jawad after shooting him in the heart, the agency said.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The killings took the overall death toll from Israel’s large-scale militarised operation, launched in the West Bank on August 28, to at least 50. Five of them were killed in an air attack on Tubas early on Wednesday morning.

Israel’s offensive against Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank came as its military continued to bombard the Gaza Strip, where Israeli attacks have killed more than 41,000 Palestinians since October 7.

The West Bank military operation, which is mostly concentrated in the territory’s northern governorates of Tulkarem, Tubas and Jenin, has displaced hundreds of people and inflicted widespread damage to roads, water and sewerage networks, according to the United Nations.

In the Jenin governorate, from where Israeli forces withdrew last week after a 10-day operation that saw the use of “lethal, war-like tactics”, at least 21 Palestinians have been killed and dozens more wounded, according to Wafa and the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA).

In its latest update on the humanitarian situation in the occupied West Bank, OCHA said Israel’s operation in Jenin displaced 1,000 families. Most of them have returned to their homes, but at least 297 people, including 102 children, remain displaced after Israeli forces rendered their homes inhabitable.

Israeli forces also bulldozed 70 percent of Jenin city’s roads and the underlying water and sewage networks, “severely impacting the safety of movement and access to essential services of water, sanitation, healthcare, education, and markets”, OCHA reported.

As a result of the destruction, water supply has been cut to approximately 35,000 residents of the camp and its surrounding neighbourhoods since August 28, it said.

The Israel-wrought destruction was similar in the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps in the Tulkarem governorate, where at least 12 people have been killed.

OCHA said some 327 Palestinians, including 123 children, remain displaced in the two camps after Israeli forces damaged 400 homes and rendered 61 of them uninhabitable.

More than 2.6km of water and sewage networks in the camps have also been bulldozed, cutting off water to approximately 33,000 people in the camps and resulting in sewage overflows, the agency added.

As Israeli operations continued in the West Bank, the military reported a ramming attack east of the city of Ramallah on Wednesday.

It said the driver of a “Palestinian truck” drove towards Israeli troops, and was “neutralised”. An Israeli soldier was killed in the incident, while the condition of the suspected assailant was not clear.