Israel launches air raids on West Bank city, 3 Palestinians killed, 13 wounded

Ramallah, The Gulf Observer: Israel’s military has launched air raids on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, dropping missiles from helicopters and killing at least three Palestinians as well as wounding 13 others, according to officials and witnesses.

Residents said at least four Israeli air attacks hit buildings in Jenin early on Monday, sending smoke billowing up from the wreckage, and reported spotting a convoy of Israeli armored vehicles moving toward the city’s vast refugee camp.

“There is bombing from the air and an invasion from the ground,” Mahmoud al-Saadi, the director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, told the AFP news agency.

“Several houses and sites have been bombed…. smoke is rising from everywhere.”

In a statement posted to Telegram in the early hours of Monday morning, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it launched an “extensive counterterrorism effort in the area of the city of Jenin and the Jenin Camp,” striking “terrorist infrastructure.”

Residents in Jenin told CNN they could hear sounds of explosions and heavy gunfire in the area, while video from the scene showed wounded Palestinians being evacuated by ambulance to Jenin Government Hospital.

The IDF said it struck a joint operational command center for the Jenin Camp and operatives of the Jenin Brigade, a Palestinian militant group associated with Islamic Jihad.

“The operational command center also served as an advanced observation and reconnaissance center, a place where armed terrorists would gather before and after terrorist activities,” the IDF said, adding that the camp was a “site for weapons and explosives” and “hub for coordination and communication among the terrorists.”

“Additionally, the command center provided shelter for wanted individuals involved in carrying out terror attacks in recent months in the area,” it said.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad said it will face its enemy “with all possible retaliation options,” in response to the Israeli operations in Jenin.

“The aggression on Jenin will not achieve its targets, Jenin will not surrender. We will face the enemy with all possible retaliation options in response to the enemy aggression on Jenin,” the group posted to its official Telegram channel.

The raid comes less than two weeks after an Israeli military raid on Jenin erupted into a massive firefight, leaving at least five Palestinians dead and dozens wounded. Eight Israeli troops were injured and successfully evacuated, according to the IDF.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said the Israeli military also announced the arrest of several “wanted Palestinians and the seizure of explosive devices”.

“Now, these are homemade Palestinian explosives that wounded eight Israeli soldiers during last month’s Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp. This was something that caught the Israeli forces by surprise and led to the use of choppers to drop missiles on Palestinians. This is the first incident of its kind that we’ve seen in the refugee camp and in the occupied West Bank in roughly 20 years,” Ibrahim said.

“Things are quite tense in the refugee camp. Ambulances cannot get to the wounded and we are expecting the number of wounded to increase,” she said.

“We know Israeli forces are trying to invade Jenin. They are still at the outskirts of the refugee camp and taking positions in houses overlooking the camp. It appears they are trying to isolate the camp from the rest of the area.”

Israeli forces have conducted regular raids on Jenin in the northern West Bank, where groups including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have hundreds of fighters.

Violence has increased in recent months and, since the start of the year, at least 177 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian have been killed, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides.