Thousands of Palestinian residents fled the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday, as Palestinian health officials said the death toll was among residents of the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank. The largest Israeli raid on the camp in nearly two decades It rose to at least 13, according to the Associated Press.
One Israeli soldier killed too A shooting took place in Jenin, an IDF spokesperson reported early Wednesday.
Meanwhile, at least eight people were wounded in a ramming attack on a crowded bus station in the city of Tel Aviv, which Hamas said was in retaliation for the ongoing Jenin raid.
Israeli security officials told the Associated Press that the Israeli military began withdrawing its forces from Jenin late Tuesday night.
Israeli military officials told Reuters that Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired five rockets towards Israel a few hours after the withdrawal began. All five were intercepted.
The Israeli military said the two-day Israeli operation inside the Jenin camp, which is located within a West Bank city of the same name, included the confiscation of weapons and the destruction of command posts and tunnels belonging to Palestinian armed groups. Streets rippled inside the camp, and gunfire and explosions were heard sporadically throughout the day as Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen clashed, though the fighting was less intense than on Monday.
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Jenin Mayor Nidal al-Obeidi said about 4,000 people fled the refugee camp to seek shelter elsewhere, and Palestinians across the West Bank staged a general strike in protest of the raid, according to the Associated Press.
“We are concerned about the scale of the air and ground operations that are taking place in Jenin and continue today in the West Bank, and especially over the air strikes targeting the densely populated refugee camp,” said Vanessa Huguenen, spokeswoman for the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs. . She said she had heard reports that three children were among the dead. Palestinian officials said the dead ranged in age from 16 to 23, according to CBS partner BBC News.
The charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said roads in the Jenin camp were blocked or destroyed, and medics were forced to travel on foot amid gunfire and drone attacks to reach the wounded.
“The use of attack helicopters and drone strikes in such a densely populated area represents a marked increase in intensity and is nothing short of egregious,” said Yovana Arsenievich, MSF coordinator in Jenin, in a statement. “The hospital where we treat patients was hit by tear gas. Medical structures, ambulances and patients must be respected.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the Israeli forces are “finishing the job” but that “our intense activity in Jenin is not a one-time operation,” the French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.
On Tuesday afternoon, a 20-year-old attacker rammed his car into a bus stop full of people in Tel Aviv, Israel’s second most populous city, before getting out and trying to stab people with a knife. Police said the attacker was shot and killed by an armed civilian at the scene.
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“In the first seconds you think the driver might be wrong,” a witness told BBC News. “He came out the window, not the door – like in a movie – with a knife in hand and started chasing civilians. Now you understand it was an attack. We ran to save our lives.”
The militant Hamas movement identified the attacker behind what it described as a “heroic operation” and “legitimate self-defense” against the Israeli operation in Jenin.
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, visited the site of the attack in Tel Aviv and called on more Israeli citizens to take up arms, according to BBC News.
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