At least 18 people have been killed in the occupied West Bank in an airstrike on a refugee camp in Tulkarm that the Israeli military has claimed killed a local Hamas leader.
Among the dead, according to Palestinan reports, was a family of four including two children, named as Mohammed Abu Zahra, his wife Sajaa, and their two children, Karam and Sham.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, described the attack as a “heinous crime” and a “massacre”.
“Eighteen martyrs following the bombing of the Tulkarm camp by the occupation,” the Palestinian health ministry said on its Telegram account.
The deadly attack was condemned on Friday by the United Nations rights office. “The strike is part of a highly concerning pattern of unlawful use of force […] during military-like operations in the West Bank that have caused widespread harm to Palestinians and significant damage to buildings and infrastructure,” it said in a statement, calling it an “unlawful air strike”.
An activist in the area told AFP the Israeli strike “hit a cafeteria in a four-storey building”, adding that there were “many victims” in the hospital.
The Israeli army confirmed the strike in the northern West Bank, describing it as a joint operation carried out by the Shin Bet internal security service and the air force, according to a brief statement.
It was the first airstrike by an Israeli jet in the West Bank since the second intifada, which ran from 2000 to 2005. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but the current raids as well as comments by Israeli officials mark an escalation, residents have said.
Violence in the West Bank has surged alongside the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October. Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 701 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry. At least 24 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian militant attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
The Israeli military said later the strike had killed a Hamas leader, Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi and that among the dead were other “operatives” who were also active in Hamas. It accused Oufi of participating in numerous attacks in the West Bank and said he was in the process of planning another assault. Hamas condemned the airstrike, saying it would prove to be a “dangerous escalation”.
The Palestinian movement Fatah, a Hamas rival based in the occupied West Bank, has called for demonstrations on Friday to honour the “heroic martyrs” of Tulkarm. Tulkarm was one of the towns and Palestinian refugee camps targeted during a large-scale Israeli military operation in late August against militants based in the West Bank.
The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Türk, said last month that major Israeli operations in the West Bank were sometimes occurring “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades”.
