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JENIN: Israeli forces began withdrawing from the Palestinian city of Jenin on Tuesday after carrying out one of their biggest military operations in the occupied West Bank for years.
Two witnesses said they saw convoys of Israeli military vehicles leaving Jenin in what appeared to signal an end to an Israeli operation that began there early on Monday.
On Tuesday, Pakistan condemned the raids and airstrikes carried out by the Israeli occupation forces in Jenin in the strongest possible terms.
Explosions could still be heard in the northern West Bank city amid reports of a gunbattle in or near a Jenin hospital. The operation, which the army said was aimed at destroying militant infrastructure and weapons in the Jenin refugee camp, was launched with a drone strike on Monday, and over 1,000 troops had been deployed.
Twelve Palestinians were killed, Palestinian officials said.
The Islamic Jihad faction claimed four of the dead as its fighters. Hamas claimed a fifth. The status of the others was unclear, although Israeli officials said as far as they were aware, no civilians had been killed. Problems at the hospital morgue forced health services to transfer some bodies from Jenin to another hospital in nearby Qabatia, officials said.
“At this moment we are completing the mission, and I can say that our extensive activity in Jenin is not a one-time operation,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a checkpoint near the city.
The densely populated refugee camp, where some 14,000 people live in less than half a square kilometre, has been one of the focal points of a wave of violence that has swept the West Bank for more than a year, drawing growing international alarm.
A car-ramming and stabbing attack in Israel’s business hub Tel Aviv on Tuesday, in which eight people were hurt, underscored the risk of a further escalation as happened after a previous raid on Jenin did last month.
The Hamas group said the assailant, who was shot dead at the scene, was one of its members and that the attack was a response to the Jenin operation.
Earlier, thousands of people were evacuated from the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday. Drones circulated overhead and sporadic gunfire and explosions sounded near the refugee camp, which fighters from groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, fortified with a range of obstacles and watching posts to counter regular army raids.
Power and water supplies remained cut off in the Jenin refugee camp and in some areas of the city for a second day after bulldozers that ploughed up roads looking for improvised bombs cut power cables and a main water pipe.
Israeli forces claimed uncovering several underground explosives caches, one concealed in a tunnel.
UN human rights chief
The UN human rights chief denounced the latest cycle of violence in the occupied West Bank, saying the killings and woundings must cease.
“The recent operation in the occupied West Bank and car ramming attack in Tel Aviv worryingly underscore an all too familiar pattern of events: that violence only begets more violence,” Volker Turk said in a statement.
“The killing, maiming and the destruction of property must stop.”
Turk said some of the methods and weapons used in the Jenin raid “are more generally associated with the conduct of hostilities in armed conflict, rather than law enforcement”.
“The use of air strikes is inconsistent with rules applicable to the conduct of law enforcement operations. In a context of occupation, the deaths resulting from such airstrikes may also amount to wilful killings,” he said.
Turk said Israeli forces in the West Bank needed to abide by international human rights standards on the use of force.
Pakistan condemns
“This latest episode of violence against the occupied people of Palestine by the occupying power must end immediately,” the Foreign Office said on Tuesday.
Pakistan called upon the international community to assume its responsibility in bringing these brutal and illegal actions by the Israeli occupation forces to a halt and to ensure protection of the human rights of the Palestinian people.
“Pakistan reaffirms its strong and unwavering support to the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people for the full realisation of their rights and freedoms — including the right to self-determination,” the statement said.