The Israeli army launched drone strikes in the occupied West Bank area of Jenin Monday as part of an “extensive counterterrorism effort” that the Palestinian health ministry said killed five residents.
The operation comes two weeks after an Israeli army raid in Jenin refugee camp left seven people dead, and saw rare use of helicopter missile fire.
Israel has stepped up operations in the northern West Bank, home to Jenin city and its adjacent refugee camp, which is a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups and where there has been a spate of attacks on Israelis as well as attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian communities.
The Palestinian health ministry said that in Monday’s operation five people were killed and 27 injured.
“There is bombing from the air and an invasion from the ground,” Mahmoud al-Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, told AFP.
“Several houses and sites have been bombed… smoke is rising from everywhere.”
The Israeli army said its forces had struck a “joint operations center,” which served as a command post for the “Jenin Brigade,” a local militant group.
The area is nominally under the control of president Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.
The army said the early-Monday operation targeted an “observation and reconnaissance” site, as well as a weapons storage facility and a hideout for those alleged to have carried out attacks on Israeli targets in recent months.
Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has worsened since early last year, including under the latest administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which took power in December, a coalition between his Likud party and extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies.
Netanyahu’s coalition contains hardline settlers, including extreme-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.