WEST BANK: Palestinian health authorities said an Israeli airstrike in the northern West Bank killed at least 10 people late Wednesday.
Israel’s use of a jet fighter to strike the rural village of Tamoun late Wednesday marked the latest escalation in its intensifying crackdown on Palestinian militants in the occupied territory.
Residents of Tamoun said that the airstrike hit a house in a crowded neighborhood. The Palestinian Health Ministry cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise.
In a statement, Hamas mourned the men killed in Tamoun but did not claim them as members. It called on Palestinians across Israel and the occupied West Bank to mobilize against Israel in hopes of making it “pay the price for its crimes.”
The tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is aimed at ending the war in Gaza and securing the release of dozens of hostages held by the militant group, as well as hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned or detained by Israel. The truce does not apply to the West Bank.
Under the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have jubilantly returned to northern Gaza over the past three days. However, their homecoming has been bittersweet as nearly everyone has friends or relatives who died, and many northern neighborhoods have been transformed into an apocalyptic landscape of devastation by more than 15 months of war.