West Bank: 18 people reportedly killed in Israeli attack on Hamas figure | West Bank

At least 18 people were killed in a West Bank refugee camp after an airstrike that the Israeli military said killed a local Hamas leader, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

A source within the Palestinian security services told AFP that the attack was the deadliest in the West Bank since 2000.

“Eighteen martyrs following the bombing of the Tulkarm camp by the occupation,” the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on its Telegram account.

An activist in the area told AFP that the Israeli attack “hit a cafeteria in a four-story building,” adding that there were “many casualties in the hospital.”

The Israeli army confirmed the attack in the Tulkarm area of ​​the northern West Bank and described it as a joint operation by the Shin Bet internal security service and the air force, according to a brief statement from the military.

The Israeli military later said the attack killed a Hamas leader, Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi – and said other “activists” also active in Hamas were among the dead.

The army accused Oufi of being involved in numerous attacks in the West Bank and said he was planning another attack.

Hamas condemned the airstrike, calling it a “cruel attack” that would prove to be a “dangerous escalation.”

The Palestinian movement Fatah, a Hamas rival based in the occupied West Bank, called for demonstrations on Friday to honor the “heroic martyrs” of Tulkarm. Tulkarm was one of the towns and Palestinian refugee camps targeted during a large-scale Israeli military operation against West Bank-based militants in late August.

In parallel with the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, violence in the West Bank has increased.

Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 701 Palestinians in the West Bank since the Hamas attack, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. At least 24 Israelis, including members of the security forces, were killed in Palestinian militant attacks during the same period, Israeli officials say.

Major Israeli operations in the West Bank sometimes take place “on a scale not seen in the last two decades,” United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said last month.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly invade Palestinian communities, but the current raids and comments from Israeli officials mark an escalation, residents say.