Nablus, Palestinian Territories– The Israeli army said Monday it was striking targets in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in an “extensive counterterrorism effort” that the Palestinian health ministry said had killed one resident and injured another.
The city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp are a regular site of confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.
“One citizen was killed and another seriously injured in the occupation (Israeli) bombing of Jenin,” the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli army said its forces had struck a “joint operations center”, which it claimed served as a command post for the “Jenin Brigade”, a local militant group.
The Israeli army regularly conducts raids into the area, which is nominally under the control of president Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.
The army said the early Monday operation had targeted an “observation and reconnaissance” site, as well as a weapons storage facility and a hideout for those alleged to have carried out attacks on Israeli targets in recent months.
Smoke ‘everywhere’
“There is bombing from the air and an invasion from the ground,” Mahmoud al-Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, told AFP.
“Several houses and sites have been bombed….smoke is rising from everywhere.”
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said in a statement that “all options are open to strike the enemy (Israel) in response to its aggression in Jenin”.
In June, Israel’s military killed seven people in a raid on Jenin camp, among them two 15-year-olds and at least one militant.
That raid also saw the army fire missiles from a helicopter, something not seen in the West Bank since 2002, during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, according to one Palestinian official.
Days later, Israeli forces killed three members of a “terrorist cell” in a drone strike near Jenin, the first use of such a strike in the West Bank in years.
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.
They include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians and three members of the Arab minority.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.