Death toll in Israeli West Bank offensive reaches 20 on third day

The death toll from Israel’s three-day assault on the occupied West Bank rose to 20 as of Friday, the Israeli and Palestinian health ministries said, while violence continued in the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, US-based aid group Anera said an Israeli attack killed four Palestinians accompanying its convoy on Thursday. The Israeli military reported that it struck down armed assailants.

The United Nations World Food Programme said on Wednesday it had suspended aid operations after one of its vehicles came under attack by Israel.

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

Israel describes its attacks on towns and refugee camps in the northern West Bank as “counter-terrorist” operations.

The military and the Palestinian Health Ministry said they had killed at least 20 Palestinians since Wednesday.

Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said at least 13 of their fighters were among the dead.

The military said earlier it killed three Hamas militants in an airstrike near the northern city of Jenin on Friday.

One of them is reportedly Wissam Kazem, the commander of the Jenin militant group.

The attack took place in the town of Zababud, southeast of the city, hitting a car, witnesses told AFP.

Israeli troops withdrew from other West Bank towns late Thursday, but fighting continued around Jenin, long a center of militant activity.

On Friday evening, an AFP photographer reported that gunfire and explosions continued in Jenin.

Vaccination ‘pause’

In Gaza, Israeli artillery shelled western Gaza city in the early hours of Friday, an AFP correspondent said, while a medical worker at Nasser hospital in the south said Israeli strikes killed three people near the southern city of Khan Younis.

The World Health Organization said the Gaza Strip had its first case of polio in a quarter-century, and Israel agreed to a “humanitarian pause” in parts of Gaza for at least three days starting Sunday to help with a vaccination campaign.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the measures were “not a ceasefire”.

Israel’s attacks on the West Bank have caused significant damage, particularly in Tulkarm, with the governor of the province, Mustafa Takatka, describing the assault as “unprecedented” and a “dangerous signal”.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club advocacy group said at least 45 people had been detained in the West Bank since Wednesday. The Israeli military said it had “arrested 17 suspects with links to terrorists.”

Britain said on Friday it was “deeply” concerned about the attack and urged Israel to “exercise restraint” and abide by international law.

France said Israel’s actions had “fuelled an unprecedented climate of instability and violence”, while Spain condemned “an outbreak of clearly unacceptable violence”.

Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking the Gaza war.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that at least 637 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza war by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the region.

During the same period, 19 Israelis, including soldiers, were killed in Palestinian attacks or military operations, according to official Israeli data.

“Basic sense of humanity”

Israeli shelling of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Friday killed two people, the civil defense agency in the Hamas-controlled area said.

Joyce Msuya, acting director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that “more than 88% of the Gaza Strip has been ordered to evacuate (by Israel),” adding that civilians have been forced into 11% of the Strip.

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

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that “the number of humanitarian missions and operations denied access to Gaza by Israeli authorities almost doubled in August compared to July.”

Meanwhile, COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for managing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that “3,577 pallets of aid from international organizations shipped by sea from Cyprus began to be unloaded at the port of Ashdod.”

The Hamas attack on October 7 killed 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Palestinian militants also took 251 hostages, 103 of whom remain in Gaza, and the Israeli military said 33 had died.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel’s retaliatory military operations have killed at least 40,602 people in Gaza. The United Nations Human Rights Office said most of the dead were women and children.

The war brought tremendous destruction to Gaza, displaced most of the 2.4 million Gazans and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

The Israeli military said on Friday it had ended a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said had killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters.

Some Palestinians returned to find extensive destruction in the Deir el-Balah area in central Gaza and parts of Khan Yunis, a major city in the south.

In Khan Younis, Amal Astar, 48, said: “We found our house destroyed and our neighbours’ houses destroyed. The body of one of our neighbours was rotting there.”

Mohammed Abu Turya told AFP he returned to Deir al-Balah “to find massive destruction everywhere”.

The Gaza war has attracted Iranian-backed fighters from across the region, including Lebanon and Yemen, raising concerns that the fighting could spread more widely.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix warned on Friday that “the risk of escalation at the regional level remains very high.”