A car-ramming attack injured seven in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, as the Israeli army continued a large-scale operation in which ten Palestinians were killed in the northern city and camp of Jenin. Occupied West Bank.
Israeli police said they had received reports of “a car that attacked a number of civilians” in north Tel Aviv, adding that they had “neutralized the assailant”. Doctors said five injured were evacuated to hospitals while police reported seven injured.
In Jenin, shops remained closed on Tuesday as drones flew over the city, an AFP correspondent reported, on the second day of an operation mobilizing hundreds of soldiers, the Israeli army’s largest in the West Bank since several years.
The almost deserted streets are strewn with debris and stones, the bitumen is gutted and the roadway is blackened around improvised barricades.
The army announced that it had “neutralized” an underground shaft used to store explosives in Jenin. “In addition, the soldiers located and dismantled two operational rooms belonging to terrorist organizations in the area,” the army added in a statement on Tuesday.
Israeli forces struck a “joint operations center” of a local armed group, the Jenin Brigade, an arms depot, an “observation and reconnaissance” site and a cache used by suspected perpetrators of attacks on Israeli targets, according to the army.
“One hundred and twenty Palestinian suspects” have been apprehended since Monday while “about 300 armed terrorists are still in Jenin, most of them in hiding”, the army said.
The city of Jenin and the adjacent refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli operations.
The northern occupied West Bank has seen a recent spate of attacks on Israelis as well as anti-Palestinian violence by Jewish settlers.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 10 Palestinians have been killed and 100 injured, 20 of whom are in serious condition.
“Our forces entered the nest of terrorists in Jenin […]they are destroying command centers and seizing a considerable quantity of weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
This is “an open war against the population in Jenin”, denounced the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Worst raid in five years”
The fighting caused the exodus on Monday evening of “about 3,000” inhabitants of the camp, where some 18,000 Palestinians live, according to the deputy governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Roub.
“There are aerial bombardments and an invasion on the ground,” Mahmoud al-Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin, told AFP on Monday. Houses are “bombarded” and “smoke rises everywhere. »
“We received many wounded”, in particular “by bullets”, affirmed Qasem Benighader, a nurse of 35 years in the hospital of Jenin: “It is the worst raid for five years. »
According to a doctor at the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, the wounded died because they were not treated in time.
“Some died, others saw their condition worsen,” Dr. Tawfeek al-Shobaki testified on Tuesday, adding that the destruction committed by Israeli forces around the camp made it more difficult for vehicles to circulate.
“Gross violation”
In June, seven people were killed in an Israeli raid on the Jenin camp. Shortly after, four Israelis were shot dead by two Palestinians near the Jewish settlement of Eli in the northern West Bank.
“All options are on the table to strike the enemy,” warned the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas leader Ishmael Haniyeh denounced a “brutal” Israeli operation.
On the diplomatic front, the Arab League announced an emergency meeting on Tuesday.
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, Arab countries maintaining diplomatic ties with Israel, denounced the operation.
Washington, for its part, said it supported “Israel’s security and its right to defend its population”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed his “deep concern”.
Violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed at least 186 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian since the beginning of the year, according to an AFP count established from official sources.