Israeli strikes in West Bank kill eight, paramedics say

Eight Palestinians have been killed in two Israeli air strikes in the north of the occupied West Bank, paramedics and health officials say.

The first strike took place around dawn on Wednesday and killed five young men in Tubas, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it targeted an armed “terrorist cell” during a counter-terrorism operation in the city.

The IDF adds that it conducted a second strike in the evening during a separate operation in Tulkarm. The Red Crescent says three people were killed when a car was hit.

Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed in what the IDF said was a ramming attack involving a fuel tanker elsewhere in the West Bank.

The IDF said a “terrorist driving a Palestinian truck” near the Jewish settlement of Givat Assaf “accelerated towards forces conducting operational activity”.

Soldiers and an armed civilian then “neutralised” the driver at the scene, it added.

Israeli media posted video footage showing a tanker veering off a busy road at high speed before hitting a bus stop. They also identified the driver as a Palestinian man from Rafat.

Rafat’s council leader told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that he knew the driver and did not believe it was an attack, but rather a case of him losing control of the tanker.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian health ministry says, as Israeli forces have intensified their nearly daily search and arrest raids.

Israel says it is trying to stem Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Israel, in which at least 33 Israelis have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

The IDF said in a statement that its troops, along with forces from the Shin Bet internal security agency and Israel Prison Service, had been operating since Tuesday night to “thwart terror” in Tubas and Tamun.

An air strike killed “five terrorists armed with explosives who posed a threat to the forces, while the forces on the ground confiscated weapons, dismantled a vehicle rigged with explosives, and hit several armed fighters during exchanges of fire, it added”.

A curfew in Tubas was also imposed on Tubas and that the city’s government hospital was surrounded, with people allowed to exit and enter subject to being checked by Israeli forces, according to an Israeli military official.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Wednesday morning that Israeli forces were carrying out large-scale raids on the city’s outskirts and several neighbourhoods.

It also said another Israeli military operation was continuing in the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camps for a second day.

On Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said a Palestinian man and woman had been killed by gunfire from Israeli forces in Tulkarm.

The IDF has not commented on that report, but the statement it put out on Wednesday afternoon said Israeli forces had “eliminated an armed terrorist and struck several others” during a counter-terrorism operation in the Tulkarm area.

Later, the IDF put out a brief statement saying that an aircraft had conducted an air strike in Tulkarm, without providing any further details.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had taken the bodies of three Palestinians to a local hospital following a drone strike on a vehicle in a suburb of Tulkarm.

Armed groups identified the dead men as fighters, according to Palestinian media reports.

The raids come days after the largest Israeli operation in the West Bank since last October.

The Palestinian health ministry said at least 36 Palestinians had been killed during the nine-day operation in the Tubas, Tulkarm and Jenin areas. Most of the dead were claimed by armed groups as members, but the ministry said children were also among those killed.

An Israeli soldier was also killed during the fighting in Jenin.

In a separate development on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said Israel had to do more to make sure that incidents like the killing of an American-Turkish activist during a protest in the West Bank last week “never happen again”.

The IDF said on Tuesday that it was “highly likely” Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was “hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her”.

Mr Biden said the US had confidence in the result of the Israeli investigation but described the killing as “totally unacceptable” and demanded full accountability.

An Israeli government spokesman insisted the IDF’s rules of engagement were “extremely clear in preventing any damage to any harm to civilians”.