Israel raid on West Bank's Jenin enters second day after eight killed

An Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Jenin stretched into a second day on Wednesday, an AFP correspondent reported, after eight Palestinians were killed the previous day.

Explosions and gunfire were heard from inside the adjacent Jenin refugee camp, the AFP correspondent said.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli troops had killed eight people and wounded nearly 20 during the raid, which began on Tuesday morning.

An AFP correspondent saw four bodies at Jenin's Khalil Suleiman government hospital morgue.

The Israeli army claimed on Wednesday that troops had "exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces".

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from the government hospital, was among those killed.

A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.

The Israeli army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was allegedly suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.

Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, medics and military officials said at the time.

The streets near the entrance to the camp were deserted on Wednesday afternoon, with drones buzzing overhead.

On the outskirts of the city, a group of Israeli armoured vehicles were parked near a roundabout, while farm workers picked vegetables across the road.

'Criminal mentality'

Hamas called the raid a "massacre" and deemed it "conclusive evidence of the criminal mentality that rules the occupying state and its ideological belief in killing our people".

The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the raid, saying in a statement on Wafa that Israel was "killing innocent people, doctors, and destroying the infrastructure of Palestinian hospitals, cities and villages".

The Israeli army routinely carries out raids into Jenin and the city's adjacent camp.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank since 1967.

At least 513 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out in October, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's war on Gaza has so far killed at least 35,709 people, according to the Palestinian enclave's health ministry.

A Hamas-led 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.