Israel carried out air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in response to rocket fire from the coastal enclave, as the military began withdrawing forces from Jenin in the occupied West Bank after a major two-day operation in the area.
Twelve Palestinians and an Israeli soldier have been killed during the assault on a Jenin refugee camp, launched early on Monday under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government.
The raid, Israel’s biggest military operation in years in the West Bank, employed hundreds of troops as well as drone strikes and army bulldozers that ripped up streets.
Elsewhere, a car ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on Tuesday wounded seven people before the suspect was shot dead.
The large-scale Israeli army assault on Jenin camp had so far killed 12 Palestinians, the Palestinian health ministry said. During the operation, an Israeli soldier was also killed by “live fire” late on Tuesday, the army announced.
Early on Wednesday, the army said it carried out air strikes on the Gaza Strip after it intercepted five rockets fired at Israeli territory.
A Palestinian security source said the attack hit a military site of the militant group Hamas in northern Gaza but caused no injuries.
The Palestinian foreign ministry labelled the escalation “open war against the people of Jenin”.
The United Nations decried the violence in Tel Aviv and Jenin. “The killing, maiming and the destruction of property must stop,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also condemned the violence in Jenin, calling on the international community to “act now to stop this egregious spilling of Palestinian blood”.
“I reiterate strongest support for legitimate Palestinian cause and struggle,” he said.
A day earlier, the Foreign Office (FO) had condemned the recent Israeli raids and airstrikes in Jenin in the “strongest possible terms”.
“This latest episode of violence against the occupied people of Palestine by the occupying power must end immediately,” it said in a statement.
