Israel launches deadly West Bank operation

Israeli military armoured vehicles drive down a road during a raid in the al-Faraa camp for Palestinian refugees near Tubas city in the occupied West Bank on Aug. 28, 2024.

The Israeli army targeted four cities in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, launching a major new operation alongside its 10-month-old war in Gaza.

Violence has surged in the West Bank during the Gaza conflict sparked by Islamist group Hamas's unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

The war has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

It has also caused widespread destruction in the Palestinian territory, displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million people at least once, and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

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.

The army said it was carrying out a "counter-terrorism operation."

The operation, which involved air strikes, ground forces, and bulldozers, claimed the lives of at least 10 people, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

They included two Palestinians killed in Jenin, four in a strike on a car in a nearby village, and four more in a refugee camp near Tubas, said its spokesman, Ahmed Jibril.

Fifteen others were wounded, he said.

The Israeli army said it had killed nine Palestinian "terrorists" in its ongoing operation.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the military was "operating in full force since last night" in a bid to "dismantle Iranian-Islamic terror infrastructure."

In a post on X, he accused Iran, Israel's main foe in the region, of seeking to "establish an eastern front against Israel" based...