JENIN: Hundreds of Israeli troops backed by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers raided the flashpoint cities of Jenin and Tulkarm and other areas in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, killing at least 10 Palestinians.
The assault, one of the largest seen in the West Bank for months, followed a series of smaller raids in the area over recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said that Israel's large-scale military operation on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank "risks seriously deepening the already catastrophic situation" in the Palestinian territory.
Israel's operations in the cities "and the killing of at least 10 Palestinians, two of them reportedly children, take the overall death toll in the West Bank since October 7 to 637," UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement.
"This represents the highest number of fatalities over a period of eight months since the UN first started recording casualties in the West Bank two decades ago."
In the West Bank in the early hours of Wednesday, the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids across four cities — Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem.
Columns of Israeli 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 Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces killed nine people and wounded 15 others in the raids, revising its previous toll of 10 dead.
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 on the northern West Bank", Palestinian official media said.
OPEN WAR
Islamic Jihad issued a statement early on Wednesday denouncing an "open war" by Israel.
"With this aggression, which aims to transfer the weight of the conflict to the occupied West Bank, the occupier wants to impose a new state of affairs on the ground to annex the West Bank," the statement said.
Hamas late on Tuesday reiterated its call for Palestinians in the territory to "rise up".
Its statement came in response to comments by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said this week he would build a synagogue at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al Aqsa mosque compound if he could.
Ben Gvir, a settler himself, has openly called for the annexation of the West Bank.
In Gaza, families in distress continued to move according to the Israeli army's evacuation orders.
One of the latest targeted the area around Al Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, from which "nearly 650 patients have fled", Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.
The medical charity's website says it has "quickly opened a field hospital and started receiving patients amid a severe lack of supplies and resources".
MSF said field hospitals are not a solution, "but a last resort in response to Israel's dismantling of the healthcare system". SEE ALSO P6
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