TEL AVIV — Hundreds of Israeli troops launched raids in several areas of the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, carrying out mass arrests, engaging in gun battles and killing at least 11 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials.
Eyewitnesses described drones scanning the skies, bulldozers ramming through terrain and armored personnel carriers on the streets as the IDF surrounded hospitals and set up checkpoints, and went house to house making arrests.
Medics transported 10 people who were killed to medical facilities in Jenin and nearby Tubas, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. The Jenin Battalion, a Palestinian militant group, said six of its members were killed; it was not immediately clear whether those casualties were included in the count announced by authorities. Hamas’s armed wing also said three of its members were killed.
The Health Ministry in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority, said early Thursday that the death toll had increased to 11 after a 35-year-old man was killed by Israeli forces in Jenin. More than 20 other people were injured, it said.
Israel has said it has seen a spike in attacks emanating from the West Bank, especially the northern areas, in recent months. Hamas claimed responsibility for an attempted bombing attack in Tel Aviv this month, saying it plans to carry out similar operations for as long as the war in Gaza continues.
Over the course of the conflict, Israel has stepped up its raids in the West Bank, fueling discontent among communities where violence carried out by Israeli settlers has also surged. Since Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked Israel, at least 622 Palestinians and 15 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, according to the U.N. humanitarian affairs office.
Among them are at least 136 Palestinians who have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, the United Nations says, with 135 of the fatalities occurring in the northern West Bank.
In the past 10 months, the IDF raids have focused primarily on Jenin, a longtime hub of armed resistance against Israel’s occupation. Israeli forces have killed dozens of members of the Jenin Battalion since October, but the group’s recruitment numbers have doubled during the same period, one of its fighters recently told The Washington Post.
On Wednesday, the IDF said it had killed three “armed terrorists” in an airstrike in Jenin, and another two fighters in the areas of Jenin and Tulkarm. It said four other armed militants who posed a threat to troops were killed in a strike on a car in the area of al-Fara’a camp.
The Jenin Battalion said four of its members were killed in an Israeli strike on a car in Sir, 11 miles south of Jenin, and two were killed during the Israeli operation in the Jenin camp.
In a Wednesday statement, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the country would address the threats in the West Bank “with the same determination used against terror infrastructures in Gaza.” He said that included “temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents” and any other “necessary measures.”
Residents were told Wednesday to evacuate from the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm as part of the operation, Palestinian political leaders said.
Before the raid, Israeli officials instructed the Palestinian Authority to tell civilians in the Nur Shams camp to leave within four hours because the IDF was going to carry out a military operation for several days, according to a Palestinian political leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the raid. The warning then went out through a network of WhatsApp groups.
Iyad Jarrad, the Fatah movement’s secretary general in the area, also said residents of Nur Shams, home to about 8,000 people, were asked to evacuate. Israeli forces also blocked off entry into Tulkarm, according to residents.
“Tulkarm is under siege from all directions,” Jarrad said.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, described the operation as “a continuation of the comprehensive war on the Palestinian people, our land and our holy sites.” He called on the United States to intervene. “The world must take immediate and urgent action to curb this extremist government,” he said.
The IDF said the operation was necessary due to an uptick in Palestinian violence against Israelis and cited the killing of 30 Israelis in 2023. There has also been an increase in attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians, including one this month, when a 23-year-old Palestinian was killed by a group of settlers in the northern West Bank town of Jit.
On Wednesday, the IDF released what it said was a summary of its investigation into the riots in Jit, where “one hundred masked Israeli civilians entered the town” and torched cars and buildings, trapping Palestinians inside burning homes, the military said.
“This is a very serious terror incident in which Israelis set out to deliberately harm the residents of the town of Jit, and we failed by not succeeding to arrive earlier to protect them,” Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the IDF’s Central Command, said in the statement. The shooting death of the 23-year-old Palestinian man was still under investigation, the IDF said.
The Biden administration has expressed growing dismay about Israeli settler violence and on Wednesday imposed sanctions on an Israeli nonprofit and a West Bank settlement security official.
“Extremist settler violence in the West Bank causes intense human suffering, harms Israel’s security, and undermines the prospect for peace and stability in the region,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The Health Ministry in Ramallah called on international organizations to stop what it described as “threats to storm” hospitals in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas. Mahmoud al-Saadi, director of the PRCS branch in Jenin, said that Israeli army vehicles had surrounded the roads to local hospitals and set up checkpoints, slowing down the organization’s ambulances, which could pass only with coordination.
“For our staff, this is heavy work today because of the checkpoints, because of the snipers and all the roads are surrounded by Israeli vehicles,” he said. He added that Ibn Sina Hospital, a private hospital in Jenin, has been entirely surrounded by Israeli forces. The casualties included one person who died after he was shot in the chest and another who is in stable condition after being hit by shrapnel, Saadi said.
Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity, said in a statement Wednesday that “attacks on healthcare workers and facilities are violations of international humanitarian law, and healthcare workers and patients must be protected.”
Masoud Ammar, a 58-year-old lawyer who lives in Jenin, said in a phone interview that “the sky is full of drones” and described seeing “a huge number of armored personnel carriers.” While Israeli officials described it as a necessary counterterrorism operation, Ammar questioned the need for such a powerful show of force. “Large numbers of soldiers armed to the teeth,” he said. “And all this, against whom?”
At al-Fara’a refugee camp, Asem Mansour, head of the popular committee that oversees camp services, said the incursion that started there at 3 a.m. was the “largest and most extensive” in the camp’s history. Electricity had been cut to large parts of the camp and bulldozers had churned up the streets.
Morris reported from Berlin, Vinall from Seoul, Parker and Balousha from Cairo, and Brown from Washington. Sufian Taha in East Jerusalem and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Palestine Red Crescent Society had transported two fatalities to a hospital in Jenin early Wednesday. One person died but the other was injured and has since stabilized. This article has been corrected.
