The operation carried out for two days in the Jenin region in the occupied West Bank and which left 12 dead on the Palestinian side and killed an Israeli soldier is officially over, the Israeli army announced on Wednesday.
“The operation is officially over and the soldiers have left the Jenin area,” an army spokeswoman told AFP.
Extensive Israeli operation in Jenin
© / afp.com/Valentin RAKOVSKY
rocket fire
Five rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip and were intercepted, the Israeli army said on Wednesday. No Palestinian claims were immediately reported.
Shots to which Israel “responded” by hitting Gaza, a Palestinian security source indicating that a military site of the Islamist movement Hamas in the north of the strip had been hit, without causing any injuries.
On Tuesday, a car bombing in Tel Aviv injured seven people, an attack hailed by Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, speaking of “a first response to the crimes against our people in Jenin camp”.
At the scene of the attack, police chief Yaakov Shabtai said the “terrorist” was a West Bank resident who was shot dead by a passerby.
“A disastrous situation”
In Jenin, overflown by drones, the shops remained closed on Tuesday, reported an AFP correspondent, on the second day of an operation which mobilized hundreds of Israeli soldiers in this city and the adjacent refugee camp.
The almost deserted streets are strewn with debris and stones, the bitumen is gutted and the roadway is blackened around improvised barricades.
“The refugee camp is facing a disastrous situation,” Jenin Mayor Nidal Abu Saleh told AFP, referring to power and water cuts there.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila called the Israeli operation “an aggression that defies international law” at a press conference on Tuesday evening.
Netanyahu says he wants to ‘eradicate terrorism’
The army had announced that it had hit “a joint operations center” of a local armed group, the Jenin Brigade and several targets including six “explosive manufacturing workshops”.
“We will act as long as necessary to eradicate terrorism,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to a military base near Jenin on Tuesday. “We will not allow Jenin to become a haven for terrorism again,” he added.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 12 Palestinians were killed and 100 injured, 20 of whom are in serious condition, during the operation.
The city of Jenin and the refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli operations. The northern West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has seen a recent wave of attacks on Israelis as well as anti-Palestinian violence by Jewish settlers.