Five Palestinians were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their vehicles early Thursday, Palestinian news media said, as one of the longest and most destructive recent Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank stretched into a ninth day across several cities.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported the deaths, in the town of Far’a. They added to the toll of an already devastating military offensive, with at least 39 people killed in the raids and 145 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said the strike in Far’a targeted armed fighters who hurled explosives and shot at security forces. It has described the raids as an effort to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and combat rising attacks against Israelis.
Such raids have become a near-daily reality for the nearly three million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed there since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October, both in military strikes and at the hands of extremist Jewish settlers, according to the United Nations.
Palestinian armed groups have claimed some of those killed in the ongoing Israeli raids as members. None claimed those killed in Far’a as members, and in a statement Hamas referred to them as “residents.”
The nine days of military raids have taken an exceptional toll on Palestinians in several towns and cities, especially Jenin and Tulkarm, where many residents have trapped in their homes for days, saying that Israeli forces are operating outside their doors with armored vehicles. Bulldozers have ripped up entire streets — in what the Israeli military calls an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by armed groups — and snipers have taken up positions on rooftops and inside homes, residents have said.
For five days, Kafah Abu Sarur, 49, and his family could not leave their home in the eastern part of Jenin as Israeli forces were spread through the streets. Their neighborhood has been raided before, including six months ago when Israeli soldiers stormed into their home and ransacked it, he said.
“But this is the first time we see this kind of brutality,” said Mr. Abu Sarur, a father of seven, in an interview Thursday. “There is no humanity. They uprooted the trees, broke the buildings. The sewer mains meters under the ground, they ripped them up. The electricity, the water — they didn’t leave anything untouched.”
A few days ago, he said, Israeli forces withdrew to the outskirts of their neighborhood. Mr. Abu Sarur ventured outside to get food and water for his family, his brother’s family and his parents, all of whom live in the same building.
He found that the shops had been destroyed. With the roads impassable for vehicles, he saw volunteers bringing bread and other food into the neighborhood on foot.
The Israeli military remains in other parts of the city, he said, including the neighborhood known as Jenin camp, which originated as a refugee camp for Palestinians who fled there after the creation of Israel in 1948 and is now a regular target of Israel’s military raids.
Mr. Abu Sarur said his family was terrified that Israeli soldiers would return, and they all stay fully dressed at night in case troops storm in.
Israeli soldiers entered Tulkarm again Thursday after briefly withdrawing from it hours earlier, said Faisal Salameh, head of the services committee in Tulkarm camp, a neighborhood of the city. For residents who had been trapped in their homes for days, it was not enough time for them to step out to get provisions or check on loved ones.
“No one had a chance to get anything done,” Mr. Salameh said. “The occupation left but returned quickly.”
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