Two-day Israeli raid on West Bank city leaves 12 Palestinians dead

A two-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least 12 Palestinians, health authorities and an AFP correspondent said Thursday.

Israeli troops withdrew from the city early Thursday, the correspondent said, after carrying out raids in the city's refugee camp and exchanging fire with masked gunmen in a nearby neighbourhood in the city centre.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 12 people including four children, and wounded 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from Jenin's Khalil Suleiman government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday.

An AFP correspondent on Thursday saw five bodies at the hospital morgue, including Jabareen's.

A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.

Several of the bodies were draped in flags and carried among crowds of Palestinians, including armed militants, through the streets as gunfire rang out.

Both Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Palestinian militant group Hamas condemned the raid.

Israel's army said on Wednesday troops had "exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces".

The army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.

Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, medics and military officials said at the time.

Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups, and the Israeli army routinely carries out raids in the city and adjacent camp.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially so since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7.

At least 518 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The Gaza Strip has been gripped by more than seven months of war since Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.