Israel’s military continued what it called a new counterterrorism operation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Wednesday, arresting at least 25 people over the last day, Palestinian news media reported.
The total death toll since the start of the raid rose to 10, up from eight on Tuesday, and four more people were injured in Jenin, according to Palestinian officials cited by Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency.
The Israeli offensive, in its second day, was not just focused on Jenin.
On Wednesday, the military made arrests in Jenin, Ramallah, Hebron, Tulkarm and Bethlehem, the officials said. Enhanced security at Israeli checkpoints across the territory slowed or stopped traffic; in one case a 45-year-old woman died at a checkpoint outside Hebron while waiting to be allowed to go to a hospital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The mayor of Jenin, Mohammad Jarar, told Wafa that Israeli forces held as many as 600 people overnight at the Jenin Governmental Hospital, but they were allowed to leave Wednesday morning. The news agency described Israeli bulldozers blocking the hospital’s doors with dirt from nearby streets.
Mr. Jarar also said people had been forced to leave their homes, a claim that Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, denied. “There’s no evacuation order in Jenin,” he said.
Briefing reporters about the operation, Colonel Shoshani said people at the hospital were held temporarily to ensure they were not hurt by explosives that the military was detonating nearby.
Since a temporary cease-fire took hold in Gaza over the weekend, Israel has turned its attention to the West Bank, where tensions have risen as militants have grown in power and Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians has soared.
Colonel Shoshani said the operation in the West Bank was similar in scope to one that the military carried out in August. That 10-day raid in Jenin killed 21 people, according to Palestinian news media and residents. It was one of the most extensive and deadly raids in the West Bank in years.
The colonel said the operation was Israel’s latest effort to curb militant attacks, many of which involved improvised explosives that had been planted under both civilian streets and Israeli military vehicles.
“Our strategy is to fight those terrorists while we enable the civilian population to go on with their lives,” Colonel Shoshani said.
In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Roland Friedrich, the West Bank director of the United Nations agency that helps Palestinians, said the Israeli operation was “expected to last days” and was using advanced weapons on Jenin, including with airstrikes.
