18 dead in Israeli attack on Tulkarem refugee camp in West Bank: Ministry | News on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

At least 18 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets carried out the attack on Thursday in coordination with Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.

The army said in a later statement that it had targeted the head of Hamas's infrastructure in Tulkarem.

The Palestinian group did not immediately comment on the Israeli military's claim.

A camp official, Faisal Salama, told AFP that the attack was carried out with an F-16 fighter jet.

Footage reviewed by Al Jazeera's fact-checking agency Sanad showed scenes of devastation at the camp northwest of Nablus in the north of the West Bank.

The area was filled with huge piles of rubble and fires had broken out. Rescuers could be seen taking injured victims for medical care.

Since Israel began its war against the Gaza Strip in October 2023, Israeli military attacks have increased throughout the occupied West Bank.

According to a tally by the United Nations Humanitarian Office (OCHA), 695 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank between October 7 last year and the end of September.

The vast majority of people were killed by the Israeli army, while a dozen were killed by Israeli settlers, OCHA said.

Reporting from Amman, Jordan, Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh said in the early hours of Friday that the attack on the Tulkarem refugee camp was “the largest and deadliest airstrike we have seen in the occupied West Bank in over 20 years.”

“Even by the standards of the second intifada, this was a very large, very deadly attack on a densely populated, impoverished refugee camp,” Odeh reported.

The Tulkarem refugee camp is home to more than 21,000 people living in an area of ​​just 0.18 square kilometers (0.11 square miles), according to the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (PDF).

Odeh added that information about the attack was still coming in “because hospitals were overwhelmed.”

“An entire building was leveled,” she explained. “And the paramedics are still fighting to make sure they have all recovered [the] Corpses and that there are no survivors under the rubble.”

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack on the refugee camp as a “heinous crime” against civilians.

In a statement shared by Wafa news agency, Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the deadly attack was “part of a broader pattern of genocide against the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Last month, a UN expert warned that Israel had stepped up its military assault on the northern West Bank, leading to a “dangerous escalation”.

“The signs are on the wall and we can no longer ignore them. “Evidence is mounting that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s full control,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement.

It noted that “systematic air and ground attacks” in the areas of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas – and particularly in refugee camps – had increased in recent months.

Albanese said Israel was “targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion.”

More than 41,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October.

Israel also launched air and ground strikes in Lebanon in recent weeks, as a year of cross-border shooting between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah group escalated last month.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and thousands have been killed and injured by Israel's ongoing bombardment of the country.