The raid, launched under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government, targeted the northern city of Jenin and was the biggest in the West Bank for years, featuring armoured vehicles, army bulldozers and drones.
Since the start of the operation in the early hours of Monday about 3,000 people had left their homes in the Jenin refugee camp, deputy governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Roub told AFP, adding arrangements were being made to house them in schools and other shelters in the city of Jenin.
Firefights and explosions rocked the city and  adjacent refugee camp, a militant stronghold home to about 18,000 people, as Palestinians threw rocks at soldiers and smoke from blasts and burning barricades darkened 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.”
Nine people were killed and 100 others wounded, 20 of them seriously, the Palestinian health ministry said — exceeding the toll of seven dead in an Israeli raid in Jenin two weeks ago which saw the rare use of helicopter missile fire.
Read the article in The Australian (AFP).