The Israeli military said it killed five more West Bank militants, including a local commander, as it pressed ahead Thursday with what appeared to be the deadliest operation in the occupied territory since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel says the raids across the northern West Bank — which have killed a total of 16 people, nearly all militants, since late Tuesday — are aimed at preventing attacks. The Palestinians see them as a widening of the Israel-Hamas war aimed at perpetuating Israel's decades-long military rule over the territory.
The raids drew alarm from the United Nations and neighboring Jordan, as well as from British and French leaders, who stressed the urgency of jump-starting stalled cease-fire negotiations during meetings in Paris.
The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed that Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, was killed during a raid in the city of Tulkarem. He became a hero for many Palestinians earlier in the year when he was reported killed in an Israeli operation, only to make a surprise appearance at the funeral of other militants, where he was hoisted onto the shoulders of a cheering crowd.
Israel said he was killed Thursday along with four other militants in a shootout after the five had hidden inside a mosque. It said Abu Shujaa was linked to numerous attacks on Israelis, including a deadly shooting in June, and was planning more.
Israel's search-and-arrest raids continued for hours Thursday. Soldiers stormed several northern West Bank militant strongholds, including the city of Jenin.
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Firefights also erupted in Fara’a, a Palestinian urban refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley, where the Israeli army said it struck and killed a group of militants traveling in a car. The number of people killed in that airstrike and their militant affiliations were not immediately clear.
The army also said it uncovered caches of weapons, explosive devices and other military equipment inside a mosque in Fara’a and arrested another militant in Tulkarem, where a member of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police was lightly wounded.
Israel's large-scale operation in the West Bank began late Tuesday in several locations where Hamas said 10 of its fighters were killed, and the Palestinian Health Ministry reported an 11th death, without saying whether he was a fighter or a civilian.
The U.N. secretary-general, António Guterres, called for an immediate halt to the raids, asking Israel's government to comply with its obligations under international law and to take measures to protect civilians.
“These dangerous developments are fueling an already explosive situation in the occupied West Bank and further undermining the Palestinian Authority,” he said in a statement from his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric.
The overall toll of 16 killed in less than two days would make it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza ignited the war there.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says over 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war. Most appear to have been militants killed in gunbattles during Israeli operations like the one this week, but civilian bystanders and rock-throwing protesters have also been killed, and the territory saw a surge of Jewish settler violence.
Attacks against Israeli citizens have also risen since the start of the war.
Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering towns and cities. Over 500,000 Israelis live in well over 100 settlements across the territory that most of the international community considers illegal.
The raids have focused on refugee camps that date back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, in which around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel. Many of the camps are militant strongholds.
Hamas repeated its calls for Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up, calling the raids part of a larger plan to expand the war in Gaza. The militant group has urged security forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which cooperate with Israel, to “join the sacred battle of our people.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has also condemned the Israeli raids, but his forces were not expected to get involved.
The war in Gaza erupted when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and rampaged through army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. The militants are still holding 108 hostages, around a third of whom are believed to be dead, after most of the rest were released during a November cease-fire.
Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were militants. Around 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times, and Israeli bombardment and ground operations have caused vast destruction.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to mediate a cease-fire that would see the remaining hostages released. But the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed “total victory” over Hamas and the militant group has demanded a lasting cease-fire and a full withdrawal from the territory.
