Israeli military incursions into Gaza and the West Bank continued overnight, killing and injuring dozens of people.
A dozen people were reportedly killed in an airstrike Wednesday morning in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city. At least five Palestinians were killed and a senior Fatah leader was arrested during nighttime raids in the occupied West Bank.
Around dawn, Israeli forces targeted two residential buildings in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where many people took refuge after the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the northern part of the besieged territory.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 12 people died in the attack and more than two dozen were injured.
Multiple Israeli raids also took place overnight in the West Bank, where at least five more Palestinians were killed, bringing the death toll in the region to 130 since October, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The largest raid took place in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, where at least three Palestinians were killed.
“It started around midnight and ended around 7 a.m. and it was, by far, one of the biggest raids we have seen since October 7,” Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reported from Ramallah.
“The Israeli army came in large numbers,” Khan added. “We hear at least 100 soldiers and several armored vehicles.”
A senior leader of Fatah, a moderate Palestinian rival of Hamas, was also arrested in the raid. Khan called the detention “unusual.”
“Since October 7, the Israeli army has focused on Hamas leaders and militants in the occupied West Bank,” our correspondent said. “This arrest will therefore greatly worry the Fatah leaders here in Ramallah. The family claims that during his arrest he was beaten before being taken away.
Elsewhere, an elderly man was killed by Israeli forces in the Tulkarem district of the occupied West Bank on Wednesday morning, according to Palestinian media.
The Wafa news agency identified the slain man as Magdy Zakaria Youssef Awad, 65, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes with residents of the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. According to the agency, Awad was a physically disabled elderly man.
According to Al Jazeera’s Khan, at least 30 people were arrested during the raids, but that number is likely to rise once the Palestinian Prisoners Society collates final figures.
Al Jazeera Arabic also reported armed clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in Qalqilya, in the northwest of the West Bank.
North of Hebron, Abdullah Mohammad Meqbel, 16, was shot dead after Israeli forces fired live ammunition at a group of demonstrators who took to the streets to denounce Israel’s deadly attacks on Gaza.
The West Bank has suffered increasing levels of violence in the war between Israel and Hamas, including attacks by Israeli settlers.
In response, Palestinians declared a nationwide general strike on Wednesday.
“The most important thing we demand is to end injustice and tyranny, stop killing innocent people and refrain from arbitrary revenge,” Fakhri Muhammad Shreiteh, 26, told AFP years old, resident of Ramallah.
Continuous bombings and cutting of communications
The raids came as humanitarian groups denounced Israel’s deadly attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, reiterating their calls for an immediate ceasefire.
The Israeli army said it had targeted Hamas infrastructure in the camp “which had taken over civilian buildings.” Women and children were seen being rescued from buildings that were still standing near a huge crater, in footage shot live by Al Jazeera Arabic at the scene.
Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces engaged in heavy fighting in the Zeitoun neighborhood, located southeast of Gaza City, an Al Jazeera correspondent reported. Bombing continued in northern Gaza while Israeli incursions continued in the north and northwest of the Gaza Strip as well as the south and southeast of Gaza City.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis, said the Gaza Strip was plunged into a near-total communications blackout just after midnight on Wednesday, the second such incident since last week.
“What’s difficult about all of this is the inability to know exactly what’s going on,” Mahmoud said. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand the situation in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
So far, at least 8,525 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, including 3,542 children – more than have died in conflicts around the world in each of the last four years.
More than 1,400 people have died in Israel, most of them in the deadly Hamas attack on October 7.
