Large-scale Israeli army operation kills eight in West Bank

The military raid launched under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government in the northern city of Jenin was the biggest in the West Bank in years, featuring armoured vehicles, army bulldozers and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Gun battles and explosions rocked the city and adjacent refugee camp, a stronghold of armed groups, as Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli troops and smoke from the blasts and burning street barricades blackened the sky, an AFP correspondent said.

"There is bombing from the air and an invasion on the ground," said Mahmoud al-Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin. "Several houses and sites have been bombed... smoke is rising from everywhere."

Eight people were killed and 50 wounded, 10 seriously, the Palestinian health ministry said -- exceeding the toll of seven dead in an Israeli army raid in Jenin two weeks ago which saw the rare use of helicopter missile fire.

Monday's operation featured "brigade-level" troop numbers, said Israeli army spokesman Richard Hecht, while Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters that "we are striking the terrorism hub with great strength".

Jenin resident Badr Shagoul told AFP that "I saw them taking bulldozers into the camp, they were destroying buildings ... These were people's homes."

Israel had already stepped up armed operations in recent weeks in the northern West Bank, which has seen a spate of attacks on Israelis as well as Jewish settler violence targeting Palestinian communities.

Jenin camp resident Mahmoud Hawashin, speaking at a crowded hospital, said the situation was "catastrophic" and predicted that "for every action there is a reaction.

"If there is more Palestinian blood shed, there will be more Israeli blood shed."

- 'All options open' -

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said "all options are open to strike the enemy in response to its aggression in Jenin".

In a separate incident, a Palestinian youth was killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Israeli army said that in Jenin it had struck a "joint operations centre" of a group called the Jenin Brigade, as well as a weapons depot, an "observation and reconnaissance" site, and a hideout for those alleged to have carried out recent attacks on Israeli targets.

"People were aware that we were probably going in", Hecht told reporters, "but the method of striking from the air", with a target in the core of the camp, "basically caught them by surprise".

He said troops remained inside the camp but were after "specific targets" and "not trying to hold ground".

"We are still seizing weapons and ammunitions," Hecht said, adding that there was no specific timeline for ending the operation.

Israeli-Palestinian violence has worsened since last year, and escalated further under the current Netanyahu administration which took power in December, a coalition that includes extreme-right allies.

The Jenin area is nominally under the control of president Mahmud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.

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- 'Clear violation' -

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.

Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.

The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it occupied in 1967 and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.

However, Netanyahu has pledged to "strengthen settlements" and has expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, which have been moribund since 2014.

Jordan protested the raid as "a clear violation of international humanitarian law, as well as Israel's obligations as the occupying power".

Following Israel's Jenin raid last month, four Israelis were killed when two Palestinian gunmen attacked a petrol station near the West bank settlement of Eli. The assailants were shot dead.

In another rare action that same week, the Israeli military said it had carried out a drone strike to kill three members of a "terrorist cell" in the West Bank.

Since the start of the year at least 185 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides.

They include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, and, on the Israeli side, mostly civilians and three members of the Arab minority.