Israeli forces have killed at least four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, media reports said, as Israel’s largest military operation in the Palestinian territory since the early 2000s enters its third week.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that three people were killed in a drone attack on a vehicle in the city of Tulkarem on Wednesday night 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 the vehicle and a nearby house on fire, Wafa reported.
And in Far’a, an Israeli sniper killed Sufyan Jawad Fayez Abdul Jawad, 46, after shooting him in the heart, the agency said.
Israel had no immediate comment.
The killings bring the total death toll from Israel’s massive militarized operation in the West Bank launched on August 28 to at least 50. That toll includes five people killed in an airstrike on Tubas early Wednesday.
Arrests
About 40 people have been arrested in the West Bank since Wednesday evening, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
One of the detainees was taken from a hospital where he was being treated, the group said Thursday.
The total number of Palestinians arrested since October 7 has reached 10,700, he added.
The Israeli offensive, which the military says targets Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank, comes as the country continues to bombard the Gaza Strip, killing more than 41,000 Palestinians since October 7.
The operation in the West Bank is mainly concentrated in the northern governorates of Tulkarem, Tubas and Jenin, and has displaced hundreds of people and caused extensive damage to roads, water and sanitation networks, according to the United Nations.
In 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 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In its latest update on the situation in the West Bank, OCHA said that the Israeli operation in Jenin had displaced 1,000 families. Most of them have returned home, but at least 297 people, including 102 children, remain displaced after Israeli forces made their homes uninhabitable.
Israeli forces also razed 70 percent of Jenin city’s roads and underlying water and sewage networks, “seriously affecting the safety of movement and access to essential water, sanitation, health care, education and markets,” OCHA reported.
Due to the destruction, water supplies have been cut off for around 35,000 residents of the camp and surrounding neighbourhoods since August 28, he said.
The destruction wrought by Israel was similar in the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps in Tulkarem governorate, where at least 12 people were 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 2.6 km of water and sewage networks in the camps were also razed, cutting off water to about 33,000 people in the camps and causing sewage overflows, the agency added.
Truck Ramming Attack Accusation
As Israeli operations continue in the West Bank, the army reported a car-ramming attack east of the city of Ramallah on Wednesday.
The driver of a “Palestinian truck” drove toward Israeli troops and was “neutralized.” An Israeli soldier was killed in the incident, while the health condition of the alleged assailant is unclear.
On Thursday, Almog Cohen, a lawmaker from the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, said Israel must collectively punish Palestinians in the West Bank.
“A siege must be imposed on villages or towns from which terrorists emerge,” Cohen said, in comments carried by Israeli public radio.
