Key Points
- Israel has launched a series of coordinated raids in the occupied West Bank.
- The Palestinian Red Crescent says Israel killed people and injured 22, including ambulance staffers.
- The US has announced sanctions on an Israeli settler group.
Israel has launched coordinated raids across four northern cities in the occupied West Bank — Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem — where the Israeli military has focused much of its recent operations.
The military said its forces killed nine militants, while the Palestinian Red Crescent reported 10 deaths in the West Bank, where violence has surged since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
The Red Crescent said Israeli forces killed 10 people and wounded 22 in the raids. Its West Bank chief Younes al-Khatib said ambulances came under Israeli fire and “one of our staffers was hit”.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN secretary-general António Guterres, said the Israeli operations took place “in close proximity to four hospitals” and at least some “have been surrounded”, affecting the movement of medical teams.
The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions said in separate statements their gunmen were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in Jenin, Tulkarm and Far’a, a town in the Jordan Valley.
Violence also raged in the Gaza Strip, where the civil defence agency reported at least 12 killed by Israeli strikes, and in Lebanon where Israel’s military said it killed a “significant” Palestinian militant.
In the West Bank, a Tulkarem municipality official said the scale of the destruction was “very big”.
Israeli forces “attacked the infrastructure, in particular in the city of Tulkarem and the Nur Shams camp” and “destroyed” water and sewage systems, Hakim Abu Safiyeh told the AFP news agency.
The military carries out daily raids in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, but it is rare for these to happen in multiple cities simultaneously.
The UN Human Rights Office said Israel’s raids risk “deepening the already catastrophic situation” in the West Bank.
Since October 7, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 637 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to UN figures, and Palestinian attacks have killed at least 19 Israelis, officials say.
On Wednesday, the United States announced sanctions on an Israeli settler group, which the State Department said was involved in violence against Palestinians and the forced displacement of some 250 villagers earlier this year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he viewed the new sanctions “with utmost severity”, and was “in a pointed discussion with the US”.
The Israeli military separately admitted it had “failed” to respond on time to a settler attack on 15 August that killed a Palestinian in the West Bank village of Jit.
Israeli soldiers during a raid in the Nur Shams camp for Palestinian refugees near the city of Tulkarem. Source: Getty / Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP
In Gaza, medical charity Doctors Without Borders said “nearly 650 patients have fled” the area around Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir el-Balah following Israeli evacuation orders.
Dujarric said a UN humanitarian vehicle was struck by Israeli military gunfire on Tuesday even though it was “part of a convoy that had been fully coordinated” with the army.
An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment.
The UN’s World Food Programme said it was pausing its staff movements in Gaza “until further notice” after the “totally unacceptable” incident.
Israel’s nearly 11-month-long campaign in Gaza has since demolished swathes of the enclave, displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million people multiple times, given rise to deadly hunger and disease and killed more than 40,500 people.
With additional reporting by Reuters.
