The IDF said Tuesday night that the commander of the West Bank regional brigade in charge of the Tulkarem area was lightly injured after a bomb exploded beside his vehicle during a military operation in the city.
The Palestinian health ministry reported that the ongoing raid by Israeli forces in the city had resulted in eight fatalities, including two women. The military said it had targeted gunmen in a drone strike amid the operation, had “eliminated a terrorist,” and arrested 18 terror suspects.
Menashe Brigade Commander Col. Ayub Kayuf was taken to a hospital for treatment. He was initially listed in moderate condition following the explosion, but the army later said his injury was mild. No others were hurt by the blast.
Ramallah said two women — Khawla Ali Abdullah Abdo, 53, and Bara Khalid Hussein, 30 — were among those killed in Tulkarem. Eighteen-year-old Fathi Said Awda Ubaid was also among those killed there, it said, adding he was fatally shot in the chest and abdomen.
Residents of the Tulkarem camp reported that the raid, which began in the early hours of Tuesday, involved bulldozers destroying roads. The IDF sometimes demolishes roads amid operations to tackle bombs planted along them.
Violence in the West Bank has intensified since the war in Gaza broke out last year following Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack on Israel.
The Israeli operation came amid an unprecedented crackdown by Palestinian Authority security forces on terrorism in the West Bank, in which two Palestinian officers were killed and several more wounded in Jenin on Monday.
On Monday, Maharan Kadous, a Palestinian police officer, was killed clashing with gunmen in Jenin. Kadous was the second Palestinian security officer to be killed within 24 hours, amid an operation that began about a week ago in response to an incident earlier this month in which terror operatives stole two Palestinian Authority vehicles and paraded them through Jenin.
The PA has a relatively strong presence in the southern and central West Bank, where it can maintain order. But in the northern part of the territory, especially the refugee camps in the Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem, it has struggled to exercise authority against terror groups.
The Ramallah-based government’s recent operations against terror groups are also seen as an attempt to demonstrate its capacity to govern the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been battling the Hamas terror group.
On Sunday, it was announced that Sahar Farouk Rahil, a PA security officer who served on the PA’s elite “presidential guard,” was killed by gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp.
In a statement following Rahil’s death, PA Security Services spokesman Col. Anwar Rajab said, “This crime only strengthens the services’ determination to pursue lawbreakers, to enforce the rule of law, and to ensure the security of the Palestinian people.”
On Monday, the Jenin Battalion of the Islamic Jihad terror group published — then took down and denied ever having published — a video of four operatives wearing suicide vests warning Palestinian security officers that if they entered the refugee camp the operatives were “ready to blow ourselves up.”
Separately, images circulated online Monday that appeared to show Palestinian security officers holding RPGs, a weapon not supposed to exist in the services’ arsenal.
According to preliminary reports, the PA forces are believed to have seized the RPGs from Islamic Jihad operatives during the operation, and are not known to have used them, according to Channel 12.
Last week, Palestinian security services arrested some 110 terror operatives, seized 100 explosives, and neutralized eight car bombs, according to reports. Meanwhile, some 32 gunmen have been wounded so far, and two killed, Channel 12 reported.
Sheikh Mohammad Salah, head mufti of the Palestinian Security Services, said of the deaths, “We don’t want a second Gaza in Jenin. Better that thousands of us die, as long as they don’t destroy Jenin and Palestine.”