At the least 18 individuals have been killed in an Israeli air assault on the Tulkarem refugee camp within the occupied West Financial institution, the Palestinian Ministry of Well being stated.
The Israeli army said that its fighter jets had carried out the assault on Thursday in coordination with Israel’s inner safety service, the Shin Wager.
The military stated in a later assertion that it had focused the pinnacle of Hamas’s infrastructure in Tulkarem.
The Palestinian group didn’t instantly touch upon the Israeli army’s declare.
A camp official, Faisal Salama, instructed the AFP information company that the strike had been carried out with an F-16 fighter.
Footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking company confirmed scenes of devastation within the camp, positioned northwest of Nablus within the north of the West Bank.
The realm was crammed with large piles of wreckage and fires had damaged out. Rescuers may very well be seen speeding injured victims to obtain medical care.
Israeli military raids and attacks have surged throughout the occupied West Financial institution since Israel launched its battle on the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
Between October 7 of final 12 months and the tip of September, 695 Palestinians have been killed within the West Financial institution, in line with a tally from the United Nations humanitarian workplace (OCHA).
The overwhelming majority of individuals have been killed by the Israeli military, whereas a dozen have been killed by Israeli settlers, OCHA stated.
Reporting from Amman, Jordan, within the early hours of Friday, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh stated the assault on the Tulkarem refugee camp was “the most important and deadliest air strike that we’ve seen within the occupied West Financial institution for over 20 years”.
“Even by the second Intifada requirements, this was a really massive, very lethal strike on a densely populated, impoverished refugee camp,” Odeh reported.
The Tulkarem refugee camp is residence to greater than 21,000 individuals, residing in an space of solely 0.18 sq. kilometres (0.11 sq. miles), in line with the UN company for Palestinian refugees (PDF).
Odeh added that data on the assault was nonetheless coming in “as a result of hospitals have been overwhelmed”.
“A whole constructing was levelled,” she defined. “And the paramedics are nonetheless struggling to guarantee that they’ve recovered all [the] our bodies, and that there aren’t any survivors beneath the rubble there.”
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the assault on the refugee camp as a “heinous crime” in opposition to civilians.
In a press release shared by the Wafa information company, Nabil Abu Rudeineh stated the lethal assault was “a part of a broader sample of genocide in opposition to the Palestinian individuals in each the West Financial institution and Gaza Strip”.
Final month, a UN expert warned that Israel had ramped up its army assault on the northern West Financial institution, resulting in a “harmful escalation”.
“The writing is on the wall, and we can not proceed to disregard it. There’s mounting proof that no Palestinian is secure beneath Israel’s unfettered management,” Francesca Albanese, the UN particular rapporteur on human rights within the occupied Palestinian territories, stated in a statement.
She famous that “systematic aerial and floor assaults” within the areas of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas — and in refugee camps specifically — had intensified over the previous few months.
Israel, Albanese stated, “is concentrating on Gaza and the West Financial institution concurrently, as a part of an total strategy of elimination, substitute and territorial enlargement”.
Greater than 41,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October.
Israel in latest weeks additionally launched aerial and floor assaults in Lebanon as a 12 months of cross-border firings between Israeli forces and the Lebanese group Hezbollah escalated final month.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been displaced by Israel’s continued bombardment of the nation, whereas hundreds have been killed and injured.