Israel presses West Bank raids that Palestinians say killed 27

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces were operating Tuesday in the northern West Bank, nearly a week into military raids in the occupied territory that the Palestinian health ministry said killed at least 27.

An Israeli air strike overnight in Tulkarem killed a 15-year-old Palestinian, said a hospital source in the city.

In total, "there are 30 martyrs and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since Wednesday," when the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.

The toll includes three deaths in the Hebron area in the southern West Bank, in incidents unrelated to the raids in the north.

An AFP correspondent said the streets were empty and shops were closed in Jenin on Tuesday, with Israeli armoured vehicles and army bulldozers as well as ambulances among the few vehicles on the roads.

The correspondent said paved streets had been overturned by Israeli bulldozers in several areas, which the army says is a way to detonate explosive devices hidden under roads.

The Jenin city council said that 70 per cent of roads and streets have been destroyed since the start of the raid.

Surging violence 

In Tulkarem, near Jenin, the Israeli military said on Monday night that its aircraft struck a Palestinian militant cell "that shot at security forces during the counter-terrorism operation".

A medical source at the Tulkarem government hospital told AFP on Tuesday that a 15-year-old teenager was killed in the strike that also wounded his father and four others.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams handled several shrapnel injuries in Tulkarem, including one of its paramedics.

On Tuesday Israeli military vehicles including bulldozers were seen on the streets of Tulkarem, where roads have also been damaged or destroyed, said an AFP journalist.

One man, holding a Palestinian flag, was standing defiantly in front of the bulldozers.

In a separate incident further south, Israeli forces entered the Birzeit University campus near Ramallah before dawn on Tuesday, confiscating property from the student council, the institution said in a statement.

Violence in the Palestinian territory has surged since Hamas's October 7 attack triggered war in the Gaza Strip, which is separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory.

Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 637 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the UN figures from last week.