Israeli forces strike West Bank city with drones, Palestinians say five killed

The Israeli military said it struck a building that allegedly was a command centre for fighters

JENIN, West Bank (AP, Reuters) – Israeli drones struck targets in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank early on Monday and hundreds of troops were deployed in the area, an incursion that resembled the wide-scale military operations carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. Palestinian health officials said at least five Palestinians were killed.

Troops remained inside the Jenin refugee camp, pushing ahead with the largest operation in the area during more than a year of fighting. It came at a time of growing domestic pressure for a tough response to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers – including a shooting attack last week that killed four people.

Black smoke rose from the crowded streets of the camp as the military pressed on. The operation disrupted life for local residents, with electricity cut off in some parts and a military bulldozer seen driving through narrow streets – another reminder of Israel’s incursions during the last uprising.

The Palestinians and neighboring Jordan condemned the violence.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said the operation began just after 1 am with an airstrike on a building used by militants for planning attacks. He said the goal of the operation was to destroy and confiscate weapons.

“We’re not planning to hold ground,” he said. “We’re acting against specific targets.”

He said that a brigade-size force – roughly 2,000 soldiers – was taking part in the operation, and that military drones had carried out a series of strikes to clear the way for the ground forces. Although Israel has carried out isolated airstrikes in the West Bank in recent weeks, Hecht said Monday’s series of strikes marked an escalation unseen since 2006 – the end of the Palestinian uprising.

While Israel described the attack as a pinpoint operation, smoke billowed from within the crowded camp, with mosque minarets nearby. Ambulances raced toward the hospital, where the wounded were in stretchers.

Armored bulldozers plowed through narrow streets to clear the way for troops, damaging property in its path. Residents reported electricity was cut off in large areas of the camp.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the military blocked roads within the camp, took over houses and buildings and set up snipers on rooftops.

Meanwhile, residents said the attack involved a missile fired from the air and setting off a gunbattle that lasted into Monday morning and killed at least five people.

With the sounds of gunfire and explosives heard across the city hours after the strike and drones clearly audible overhead, the Jenin Brigades, a unit made up of different militant groups based in the city's large refugee camp, said it was engaging the Israeli forces.

"What is going on in the refugee camp is real war," said Palestinian ambulance driver, Khaled Alahmad. "There were strikes from the sky targeting the camp, every time we drive in around five to seven ambulances and we come back full with injured people."

The Israeli military said its forces struck a building that served as a command centre for fighters from the Jenin Brigades in what it described as an extensive counterterrorism effort in the West Bank.

At least six drones could be seen circling over the city but the military declined to specify whether Monday's operations included a drone strike, which had not been seen in the West Bank for more than 15 years until a strike last month killed three militant gunmen near Jenin.

However, the apparent scale of the raid underlined the importance of Jenin in the violence that has surged across the occupied West Bank for more than a year.

Hundreds of armed fighters from militant groups including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah are based in the refugee camp, which has been hit by a series of major raids by Israeli forces since the start of the year.

As daylight broke on Monday, thick black smoke from burning tyres set alight by residents swirled through the streets while calls to support the fighters rang out from loudspeakers in mosques.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed at least five people had been killed and 13 injured, three of them critically, in Jenin, while another man was killed in the city of Ramallah after being shot in the head at a checkpoint.

Hecht said as many as seven militants were believed dead.

The Israeli military said the target functioned as an "advanced observation and reconnaissance centre" and a weapons and explosives site as well as a coordination and communications hub for the militant fighters.

It provided an aerial photograph showing what it said was the target and which indicated the building hit was near two schools and a medical centre.

Only days before last month's drone strike, the army used helicopter gunships to help extract troops and vehicles from a raid on the city, after fighters used explosives against a force sent in to arrest two militant suspects.

The escalating violence in the West Bank over the past 15 months has caused mounting international alarm, with regular army raids in cities like Jenin, a series of deadly attacks by Palestinians against Israelis and rampages by Jewish settler mobs against Palestinian villages.

Israel captured the West Bank, which the Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with East Jerusalem and Gaza, in the 1967 Middle Eastern war. Following decades of conflict, peace talks that had been brokered by the United States have been frozen since 2014.