The town of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, was taken under heavy fire and explosions on Wednesday, on the second day of the Israeli operation “Iron Wall”launched just after the start of the truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
“The situation is very difficult. The occupying army bulldozed all the roads leading to the Jenin camp and the hospital”city governor Kamal Abu Rub told AFP.
“There are shots and explosions. A plane flies over the area »he added, referring to numerous arrests.
The day after the inauguration of the new American president Donald Trump, from whom the Israeli government hopes for unconditional support, the army “launched an anti-terrorist operation” in this town in the northern West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The latest report Tuesday evening showed ten dead and 35 injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The Israeli army, for its part, indicated that it had “hit more than ten terrorists” during the operation. “Air strikes on terrorist infrastructure were carried out and numerous explosives installed on the roads (…) were dismantled”.
Some 200 people were detained in Jenin hospital at the start of the day, according to the governor.
A temporary security order, to allow explosives placed outside to be defused, assured Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israeli army, during a press briefing.
He did not specify whether the measure had been lifted. “Any civilian wishing to leave the city can do so but there are no evacuation instructions”he assured.
An AFP journalist noted that a video device had been installed on an artery in Jenin, in front of which dozens of residents passed. Some of them were arrested by Israeli forces.
Defense Minister Israel Katz justified the operation in the Jenin refugee camp by “a change in security approach” of the army in the West Bank.
-“We will decisively strike the octopus tentacles until they are severed”he insisted, insisting on the need not to let these structures reappear, “a key lesson learned from repeated raid tactics used in Gaza”.
Israeli bulldozers
Jenin, particularly its refugee camp, is regularly the target of Israeli military operations against armed groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other movements more or less linked to them.
In recent months, operations have followed one another, leaving neighborhoods cut off from each other, in particular because the asphalt of certain roads has been torn up by Israeli bulldozers. The army says it uses these devices to protect itself from explosive devices.
On January 14, six Palestinians were killed in Jenin by an Israeli air force strike.
General Anouar Rajab, spokesperson for Palestinian preventive security, then denounced an operation thwarting “all efforts made (by its services) to maintain security and order and restore normal life”.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed the operation as part of a broader strategy targeting Iran, “wherever it sends its weapons – to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen” and in the West Bank.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Israel “to exercise maximum restraint and use deadly force only when absolutely unavoidable to protect lives”.
Violence in the West Bank has exploded since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on southern Israel, and which is the subject of a truce. fragile since Sunday.
Since then, at least 848 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army or by settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
At the same time, at least 29 Israelis, including soldiers, died there in Palestinian attacks or in military operations, according to Israel.
