JENIN, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces carried out airstrikes on the West Bank city of Jenin for a second day on Wednesday, killing at least 11 Palestinians in the fighting.
In the afternoon, smoke billowed over the city’s refugee camp, and explosions and gunfire could be heard from inside as soldiers in Israeli armored vehicles fired on masked youths in the city center, media reported.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces killed 11 people, including four children, and wounded 25 during the fighting that began Tuesday morning.
Four bodies were seen at the Khalil Suleiman government hospital morgue in Jenin on Tuesday.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that soldiers exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of “terrorists”, including two who threw explosives at the forces.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and the medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen from the government hospital was among those killed on Tuesday.
A teacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, citing hospital director Wissam Bakr.
The Israeli military said it raided the home of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.
Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, medical and military officials said at the time.
The streets near the entrance to the Jenin camp were deserted Wednesday afternoon, with drones buzzing overhead.
On the outskirts of town, Israeli armored vehicles were parked near a roundabout while agricultural workers toiled in a farm across the road.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas called the airstrike a “massacre” and considered it “irrefutable evidence of the criminal mentality that rules the occupying state and its ideological belief in killing our people”.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, saying in a statement on Wafa that Israel was “killing innocent people, doctors and destroying the infrastructure of Palestinian hospitals, towns and villages”.
Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups, and the Israeli military routinely raids the city and a nearby camp.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen an increase in violence for more than a year, but especially since the October 7 war between Israel and Hamas.
Since the start of the Gaza war, at least 517 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to Palestinian officials.
