Hundreds of Israeli troops backed by fleets of drones and armored vehicles carried out raids in the occupied West Bank , Israeli and Palestinian officials said on Wednesday, a growing third front in conflicts that extend from the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip to southern Lebanon.

At least 10 Palestinians were killed, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, in what Israeli officials described as an ongoing operation targeting militants and concentrated in Jenin and Tulkarm, two West Bank cities that an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said have become militant strongholds. The Israeli military said it had killed nine militants.

A Palestinian armed group based in Jenin said it had fired on Israeli forces in two villages on the city’s outskirts, and Palestinian residents in both cities described hearing intermittent gunfire.

The operation followed months of escalating Israeli raids in the occupied territory, where nearly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel, according to the United Nations, in violence involving both the Israeli military and extremist Jewish settlers. Israel has also arrested thousands of Palestinians suspected of involvement in armed groups.

That increasingly deadly campaign has unfolded alongside Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, touched off by the Oct. 7 attack, and the cross-border strikes traded with Hezbollah in Lebanon.