TEHRAN- The Israeli military has launched a broad attack on the occupied West Bank, storming its cities and towns, terrorizing families and killing at least five people, including two children.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), backed by its air force, described the wide-scale raid as a “military operation”. 

The IOF bombed a residential house in the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the bombing killed five people including two children. 

The Palestinian health ministry identified the five people killed as Mohannad Qarawi, 19, Jibril Jibril, 20, Adnan Jaber, 15, Mohammed Yusif, 49, and Mohammed Elayyan, 16. 

Palestinian media reported that the occupation’s aircraft bombed a house in the center of the Nur Shams refugee camp, killing five Palestinians and injuring several others in the vicinity of the targeted house. Four loud explosions were heard. 

Jibril was one of the political prisoners released in the exchange deal between Tel Aviv and Hamas in November 2023. 

He is said to have been pursued several times by the IOF immediately after his freedom in the seven-day ceasefire deal. 

Jibril has become the third prisoner released in November only to be killed by the IOF. 

In reaction to the Israeli raids in the West Bank, authorities in Tulkarm held the international community responsible for failing to stop the aggression against the Palestinian people. 

Media sources reported that Israeli patrols are roaming the streets of Tulkarm amid heightened tensions across various West Bank towns and cities. 

The Ministry of Health also announced that a young man has been killed after Israeli settlers started shooting at a group of Palestinians in the village of Wadi Rahhal, south of Bethlehem. Three others sustained injuries and have been transferred to hospital. 

Hadi Ziyada, head of the council of Wadi Rahhal village, stated that settlers went on the rampage attacking homes near a school with live fire. 

Ziyada added that occupation forces stormed the village to protect the settlers and fired sound bombs and tear gas at protesters, causing dozens to suffer from suffocation. 

Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has drawn global condemnation but little action has been taken to stop it. 

The IOF also stormed two towns east of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, raiding several homes. Reports say intense gunfire erupted targeting the northern checkpoint of the city. 

Young men confronted the occupation forces with Molotov cocktails during the raids. 

Palestinian media sources reported that the IOF deployed snipers at the northern checkpoint of Qalqilya city. 

At the entrance of another refugee camp, north of al-Khalil, also known as Hebron, the IOF attacked a group of young men protesting the violent arrest of a young male from the camp. 

The Israeli occupation also stormed homes during a raid on Yatta located approximately 8 km south of the city of al-Khalil. 

Furthermore, the occupation forces stormed a town west of Ramallah and a residential zone in the city of Nablus. 

Hamas said that the raids and aggression by terrorist settlers on West Bank governorates, including the latest attack south of Bethlehem, “confirm the criminal behavior of the occupation against our people everywhere.” 

In a statement, it added that the accompanying acts of looting, arson, and vandalism reveal the true face of the occupation’s criminal policies to completely seize the West Bank. 

In another statement, Hamas described the military raid in Nur Shams camp as an assassination policy, which “confirms the continuation of the occupation’s crimes and massacres extending from Gaza to every inch of the homeland”. 

The group added that "the blood of five martyrs in Tulkarm will fuel the escalation of resistance and the continuation of its heroic operations.” It urged Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to increase engagement, confrontation, and resistance against the occupiers. 

The Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement (PIJ) also stressed that the “escalation by the entity and its settlers of their crimes in the occupied West Bank in recent hours is a decision for an open, undeclared war against our Palestinian people.” 

PIJ condemned “the enemy’s use of drones to bomb a house inside Nur Shams camp in Tulkarm, resulting in five martyrs, including at least one child, and the armed settlers’ attack on Wadi Rahal west of Bethlehem and the death of a person, and the closure of large areas in the north of the West Bank, all indicate that the enemy has decided to shift the focus of its operations from Gaza to the West Bank.” 

The movement added that “the increasing Zionist brutality in the West Bank, coming as a cover for the entity’s failure in Gaza and southern Lebanon, would not have happened without shameful Arab collusion, leaving the Palestinian people alone in a battle that the entity’s criminals want to be pivotal in the course of the war.” 

According to the United Nations, at least 607 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, and occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem), including eleven by Israeli settlers, since October 7, 2023.