The Israeli military said on Wednesday it was pushing for a new counter-terror operation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, while Palestinian officials said at least 10 people had been killed.
An army spokeswoman said 10 militants were “hit” in the operation, without elaborating. Earlier, Israel said it had killed eight militants since the raid began. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said 10 people had been killed in and around Jenin since the raid began.
At least four people were wounded on Wednesday in Jenin, where the new raids were concentrated, according to Palestinian officials cited by Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority. Other West Bank cities were also targeted for raids.
The Palestinian Authority’s prisoner affairs committee said Israeli forces arrested at least 25 Palestinians across the West Bank since Tuesday afternoon.
Enhanced security at Israeli checkpoints throughout the territory slowed or halted 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 Jarrar told Wafa that Israeli forces detained up to 600 people overnight at the Jenin Government Hospital, but that they were allowed to leave on Wednesday morning. The news agency described Israeli bulldozers blocking the hospital’s doors with dirt from nearby streets.
Mahmoud al-Saadi, head of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, said the evacuated patients were taken to a checkpoint to be searched and their identities checked before being allowed to pass. Some people were detained there, said Mr. al-Saadi.
“The situation is very difficult,” Mohamed al-Masri, a resident and former member of the local committee that manages the Jenin refugee camp, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Mr. al-Masri said his family fled their home when the Israeli raid began because “there is no water or electricity.” He said Israeli forces had divided parts of Jenin into blocks and began ordering many people to evacuate while the men were being held.
Mr. Jarar also said people were forced to flee their homes, a claim that Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, denied. “There is no evacuation order in Jenin,” he said.
Briefing reporters on the operation, Colonel Sosani said people at the Jenin Government Hospital were temporarily detained to ensure they were not injured by explosives detonated by the army nearby.
Since a temporary cease-fire prevailed in Gaza over the weekend, Israel has turned its attention to the West Bank, where tensions have risen as militants have risen to power and violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians has soared to heights.
Colonel Shoshani said the operation in the West Bank was similar in scope to the one carried out by the army in August. That 10-day raid on Jenin killed 21 people, according to Palestinian media and residents. It was one of the most extensive and deadly raids on the West Bank in years.
The colonel said the operation was Israel’s latest effort to curb militant attacks, many of which involved improvised explosive devices planted both under civilian roads and Israeli military vehicles.
“Our strategy is to fight these terrorists while enabling the civilian population to get on with their lives,” Colonel Sosani 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 had engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces in several areas of Jenin and had detonated explosive devices.
A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent, Nebal Farshah, said Israeli forces continued to “impose a tight siege on the Jenin camp and surrounding neighborhoods” that prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. In addition, he said, the Israeli military had fired warning shots at ambulances on Tuesday.
In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Roland Friedrich, director of the United Nations agency in the West Bank that helps Palestinians, said the Israeli operation had been “expected for the last few days” and was using advanced weapons in Jenin, including air strikes.
