The crowd surrounds a Red Cross bus carrying Palestinians prisoners released from Israeli jails in West Bank early on Sunday — AFP TEL AVIV, Nov 26 (AP): Israeli forces operating in the occupied West Bank killed at least eight Palestinians in a 24-hour period, Palestinian health officials said Sunday, as a fragile pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip entered its third day.
Violence in the West Bank has surged in the weeks since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, setting off a devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians and arrested hundreds in the West Bank. Jewish West Bank settlers have also stepped up attacks.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that five Palestinians were killed in the militant stronghold Jenin, while three others were killed in separate areas of the West Bank since Saturday morning. One of those killed, in al-Bireh in the central West Bank, was a teenager, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said forces entered the Jenin refugee camp to arrest a Palestinian suspected of killing an Israeli father and son at a West Bank car wash earlier in the year. In its statement Sunday, the military made no mention of clashes, nor of the Palestinian deaths, but said forces were still operating in the area.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli snipers were positioned on roofs and that military bulldozers were damaging roads and infrastructure. The reports could not immediately be independently verified.
In its bid to pursue militants, Israel clamped down on the West Bank immediately after the Hamas assault, closing crossings and checkpoints between Palestinian towns.
The intensified violence in the territory follows more than a year of escalating raids and arrests in the West Bank and deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Before the Hamas assault, 2023 already was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in over two decades.
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