Death toll in Israel’s West Bank offensive reaches 19

JENIN, Palestine (AA) – At least three Palestinians were killed near Jenin, bringing the death toll from Israel’s recently launched operation in the occupied northern West Bank to 19.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the bodies were taken away by Israeli forces.

Earlier, the Israeli army said its forces killed three Palestinians near the town of Zababdeh, south of Jenin.

The Israeli army said that the victims were members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said that two of its fighters were killed in an Israeli attack on Jenin and Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the Al-Qassam Brigades said that its fighters in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Tubas “were able to ambush Israeli forces, causing significant losses,” without providing further details.

On Wednesday, the Israeli army launched the largest military offensive since 2002 in the cities of Tulkarm and Jenin, as well as in the Al Fara refugee camp near Tubas.

Tension has been running high across the occupied West Bank amid the ongoing brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 40,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since October 7 last year.

At least 673 Palestinians have since been killed, nearly 5,400 others injured and over 10,300 arrested in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian figures.

A top UN aid official meanwhile questioned “what has become of our basic humanity”, as the war raged on in Gaza and humanitarian operations struggle to respond.

The United Nations has warned the military operation which Israel launched in the West Bank early on Wednesday is “fuelling an already explosive situation” in the territory and has pressed Israel to end it.

In the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged she will not change Washington’s policy of supplying weapons to Israel if elected to the top job in November. But she stressed it was time to “end this war”.

– ‘Humanitarian pauses’ –

The World Health Organization said Israel had agreed to at least three days of “humanitarian pauses” in parts of Gaza, starting Sunday, to facilitate a vaccination drive after the first case of polio in a quarter of a century was recorded in the territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought it important to insist that the measures were “not a cease-fire” in the nearly 11-month-old genocidal war.

The Israeli assault in West Bank has caused significant destruction, especially in Tulkarem, whose governor Mustafa Taqatqa described the raids as “unprecedented” and a “dangerous signal”.

The UN had to halt the movement of aid and aid workers within Gaza on Monday due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir el-Balah area, which had become a hub for its workers.

“More than 88 percent of Gaza’s territory has come under an (Israeli) order to evacuate at some point,” the acting head of the UN humanitarian office, Joyce Msuya.

She said civilians were being forced into just 11 percent of the Gaza Strip, already one of the most densely populated territories in the world before the war.

“What we have witnessed over the past 11 months… calls into question the world’s commitment to the international legal order that was designed to prevent these tragedies,” Msuya said.

“It forces us to ask: what has become of our basic sense of humanity?”

The war has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of its 2.4 million people and triggered an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.