Israeli army launches drone strikes in the occupied West Bank area

Geneva, July 4: 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 centre", 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. - Caught 'by surprise' - "People were aware that we were probably going in but the method of striking from the air and our target was right in the core of the camp basically caught them by surprise," army spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters in an online briefing."We are still inside the camp. 

We are still seizing weapons and ammunitions" and "infrastructure"He said the army was after "specific targets" and "not trying to hold ground." There was no specific timeline as to when the ongoing operation would end, Hecht said, adding its primary focus is on the Jenin camp."The aerial platforms were UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)," Hecht said, adding it was a "brigade level" operation.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 the Six-Day War 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. (AFP)