JENIN: Israeli forces withdrew after a deadly 10-day raid in a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank on Friday, witnesses said, as key ally Germany warned against treating the territory like Gaza.
There was no official confirmation that Israel's military had withdrawn from Jenin, a bastion of Palestinian armed groups, but journalists reported residents returning home.
The pull-out came with Israel at loggerheads with its main ally the United States over talks aimed at forging a truce in the Gaza war, now nearly in its 12th month.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged both Israel and Hamas to finalise a truce deal, saying: "I think based on what I've seen, 90 per cent is agreed."
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied this in an interview with Fox News, saying: "It's not close."Washington and fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt have been pushing a proposal to bridge gaps between both sides.
Netanyahu insists on a military presence on the border between Gaza and Egypt along the so-called Philadelphi Corridor.
Hamas is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal, saying it agreed months ago to a proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden.
In Israel on Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that "a purely military approach is no solution to the situation in Gaza", after the recovery of six dead hostages announced on Sunday.
Before also visiting Ramallah, she warned against calls by hardline right-wing members of Israel's cabinet for the military to take a similar approach to the West Bank as in Gaza.
"When members of the Israeli government themselves call for the same approach in the West Bank as in Gaza, that is precisely what acutely endangers Israel's security," Baerbock told reporters. Her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz said Iran wanted to "arm" the West Bank "just like" Gaza.
"Nobody wants a deal for the hostages' release and a ceasefire more than Israel," he added, and blamed Hamas.
In Nablus, Rafidia hospital director Fouad Nafaa said a US citizen, an activist in her mid-20s, died from a "gunshot in the head" after being admitted on Friday. The official Wafa Palestinian news agency said she was an activist in a campaign to protect farmers from Israeli settler violence.
Netanyahu is under increasing pressure after the six hostages' bodies were retrieved from Gaza. Critics have blamed him for their deaths, saying he refused to make necessary concessions to strike a ceasefire deal.
Meanwhile, Israeli military strikes killed at least 27 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Friday, medics said, as health officials resumed vaccination of tens of thousands more children in the enclave against polio.
In Nuseirat, one of the territory's eight historic refugee camps, an Israeli air strike killed two women and two children, while eight other people were killed in two other air strikes in Gaza City, the medics said. The rest were killed in subsequent strikes across the enclave, they added.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces battled Hamas in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, where residents said tanks have been operating for over a week, in eastern neighbourhoods of Khan Yunis, and in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, where residents said Israeli forces blew up several houses.
Eleven months into the war, multiple rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.
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