Israel’s military said on Wednesday that it was pressing ahead with what it called a new counterterrorism operation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Palestinian officials said that at least 10 people had been killed.
A spokeswoman for the military said that 10 militants were “hit” in the operation, without giving further details. Earlier, Israel said that it had killed eight militants since the start of the raid. The Palestinian health ministry said that 10 people had been killed in Jenin and its outskirts since the start of the raid.
At least four people were injured Wednesday in Jenin, where the new rash of raids were focused, according to Palestinian officials cited by Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. Other West Bank cities were also targeted in raids.
The Palestinian Authority’s commission of prisoners’ affairs said that Israeli forces had arrested at least 25 Palestinians across the West Bank since Tuesday evening.
Enhanced security at Israeli checkpoints across the territory slowed or stopped traffic; in one case a 45-year-old woman died at a checkpoint outside Hebron while waiting to be allowed to go to a hospital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
In Jenin, Mayor Mohammad Jarar told Wafa that Israeli forces had held as many as 600 people overnight at the Jenin Governmental Hospital, but that they were allowed to leave Wednesday morning. The news agency described Israeli bulldozers blocking the hospital’s doors with dirt from nearby streets.
Mahmoud al-Saadi, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, said that patients who had been evacuated were led to a checkpoint to be searched and that their identification cards were checked before they were allowed to pass. Some people were detained there, Mr. al-Saadi said.
“The situation is very difficult,” Muhammad al-Masri, a resident and former member of the local committee that administers Jenin’s refugee camp, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Mr. al-Masri said his family fled their home when the Israeli raid began, because “there’s no water or electricity.” He said that Israeli forces had divided parts of Jenin into blocks, and began ordering people in several to evacuate while the men were detained.
Mr. Jarar also said people had been forced to leave their homes, a claim that Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, denied. “There’s no evacuation order in Jenin,” he said.
Briefing reporters about the operation, Colonel Shoshani said people at Jenin Governmental Hospital were held temporarily to ensure they were not hurt by explosives that the military was detonating nearby.
Since a temporary cease-fire took hold in Gaza over the weekend, Israel has turned its attention to the West Bank, where tensions have risen as militants have grown in power and Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians has soared.
Colonel Shoshani said the operation in the West Bank was similar in scope to one that the military carried out in August. That 10-day raid in Jenin killed 21 people, according to Palestinian news media and residents. It was one of the most extensive and deadly raids in the West Bank in years.
The colonel said the operation was Israel’s latest effort to curb militant attacks, many of which involved improvised explosives that had been planted under both civilian streets and Israeli military vehicles.
“Our strategy is to fight those terrorists while we enable the civilian population to go on with their lives,” Colonel Shoshani said.
The Jenin battalion of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group loosely affiliated with Fatah, the political faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, said in a statement on social media that its fighters were engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces in several areas of Jenin and had detonated explosive devices.
A spokeswoman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Nebal Farsakh, said that Israeli forces continue “to impose a tight siege on Jenin camp and the surrounding neighborhoods” that have stopped ambulances from reaching wounded people. Additionally, she said, Israel’s military had fired warning shots at ambulances on Tuesday.
In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Roland Friedrich, the West Bank director of the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, said the Israeli operation was “expected to last days” and was using advanced weapons on Jenin, including with airstrikes.
