Israeli troops have killed five Palestinians who were hiding inside a mosque in the occupied West Bank, after launching a huge operation across the region on Wednesday, the military reported early on Thursday.
Soldiers killed the five after “exchanges of fire during counterterrorism operations in Tulkarm”, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said on Thursday.
The Israeli army said one of those killed was involved in a shooting attack on an Israeli civilian in June.
The city of Tulkarm is one of the areas targeted by the IDF over the previous 24 hours. Today’s violence comes after Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and air strikes on Wednesday.
The army said those operations were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms, and that the operations were likely to go on for some days.
On Wednesday, the chief spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the escalation of Israeli military operations on the West Bank, at the same time as the war in Gaza, would “lead to dire and dangerous results”.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia to return to Ramallah after the launch of the large-scale Israeli military operation in the West Bank.
In Gaza, at least 34 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday as Israeli forces sent tanks deeper into Khan Younis in the south of the enclave and launched strikes, according to medics.
Residents of Khan Younis said Israeli tanks made a surprise advance into the centre of the city, and the military ordered evacuations in the east, forcing many families to run for safety, while others were trapped at home.
Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators met in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza.
Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu has suggested there could be partial suspension of military operations in Gaza to allow young children to be vaccinated against polio.
In a statement, Mr Netanyahu’s office denied an Israeli television report there would be a general truce during the vaccination campaign that begins on the weekend, but said it had approved the “designation of specific places” in Gaza.
An official investigation into the ill-fated aid pier off the coast of Gaza has found US president Joe Biden declared the US intention to build the pier as a means of delivering food despite advice to the contrary from aid experts in his administration.
The new report by the inspector general of the US Agency for International Development, which was responsible for delivering food to Gaza by the pier, paints a scathing picture of a failed project, in which political and security imperatives outweighed humanitarian considerations.
Elsewhere, Yemen’s Houthi group has agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to access a damaged crude oil tanker in the Red Sea, Iran said, after the Iranian-aligned militants attacked the Greek-flagged vessel last week.
The Sounion tanker is carrying 150,000 tonnes, or 1m barrels, of crude oil and poses an environmental hazard, shipping officials said. Any spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history. – Guardian