[DM] Israel launches major military operation in West BankIsrael launched what appeared to be a major military operation in the West bank early Monday, deploying hundreds of troops into Palestinian territory and conducting drone strikes on what it said were militant strongholds in and around Jenin.
At least seven Palestinians were killed in the strikes with dozens more injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
'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 Israeli incursion, which resembles the wide-scale deployments carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago, was described as an 'extensive counterterrorism effort' by the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The operation saw reinfornced bulldozers, armoured vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles scythe into Jenin backed up by hundreds of Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian gunmen wearing balaclavas fired back at the troops as sirens wailed.
It comes at a time of growing domestic pressure in Israel for a tough response to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers - including a shooting attack last week that killed four people.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.
Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it occupied in the Six-Day War and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.
The tensions regularly spill over into localised conflicts, but the scale of operation launched by the Israeli army this morning has not been seen in years.
The army this morning said its forces had struck a 'joint operations centre', which served as a command post for the 'Jenin Brigade', a local militant group.
The area is nominally under the control of president Mahmud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, said the operation began just after 1 a.m. 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.'
'People were aware that we were probably going in, but the method of striking from the air basically caught them by surprise.'
He said troops remained inside the camp but were after 'specific targets' and 'not trying to hold ground.'
'We are still seizing weapons and ammunitions' and 'infrastructure', Hecht said, adding the focus was on Jenin camp and that there was no specific timeline for ending the operation.
He added 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, videos on Palestinian social media showed a large tuft of white smoke billowing from a crowded area, with a mosque minaret nearby. Other videos showed a wounded man was brought into a hospital on a stretcher, while another was carried in by a group of men.
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. The agency also said the military cut off electricity in large areas of the camp and that army bulldozers caused damage to property.
Jenin has been a flashpoint as Israeli-Palestinian violence escalated since the spring of 2022. Monday's raid came two weeks after another violent confrontation in Jenin.
'There has been a dynamic here around Jenin for the last year,' Hecht said, defending Monday's tactics. 'It's been intensifying all the time.'
But there also may have been political considerations at play. Leading members of Israel's far-right government, which is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, have been calling for a broader military response to the ongoing violence in the area.