Cycle of violence hits West Bank

AFP | Jenin

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

Israel launched a large-scale operation yesterday in the occupied West Bank, where the army said it killed Palestinian fighters, as the nearly 11-month-old Gaza war showed no signs of abating.

The military said its forces killed nine Palestinians while the Palestinian Red Crescent reported 10 deaths in the West Bank, where violence has surged during the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

The war has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian territory’s health ministry, and caused widespread destruction and displacement.

Early yesterday, Is ra e l launched coordinated raids across four northern West Bank cities - Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem - where the military has focused much of its recent operations against armed groups. Columns of armoured vehicles entered two refugee camps, in Tulkarem and Tubas, as well as Jenin.

By midday, they were blocking entrances to the towns and camps, AFP photographers said, with soldiers firing at the camps from which gunfire and explosions were heard.

The Red Crescent said Israeli forces killed 10 people and wounded 22 others in the raids.

The medical organisation’s West Bank chief Younes al-Khatib said ambulances came under Israel fire and “one of our staffers was hit”.

Aggression Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas cut short a visit to Saudi Arabia and headed home to “follow up on the latest developments in light of the Israeli aggression”, Palestinian official media said.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II told visiting US lawmakers a Gaza truce was needed “to stop the cycle of violence in the region”, according to a royal statement.

Violence, meanwhile, raged in the Gaza Strip, where the civil defence agency reported at least 12 dead in Israeli strikes, and in Lebanon where the Israeli military said it killed a “significant” Palestinian fighters.

Mediation efforts seeking an end to the Gaza war continued in Qatar where an Israeli delegation was present yesterday, said a source close to the negotiations.