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Israel kills 8 Palestinians as occupied West Bank violence grows

At least eight Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces under 24 hours in the occupied West Bank while a fragile truce in Gaza entered its third day on Sunday.

Violence in the West Bank has surged in the weeks since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion and subsequent Israeli aggression in Gaza.

Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians and arrested hundreds in the West Bank. Jewish West Bank settlers have also stepped up attacks.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said that five Palestinians were killed in the militant stronghold of Jenin, while three others were killed in separate areas of the West Bank since Saturday morning. One of those killed, in al-Bireh in the central West Bank, was a teenager, the ministry said.

The Israeli military said it killed five Palestinians during an operation in the Jenin refugee camp, where it was arresting a Palestinian suspected of killing an Israeli father and son at a West Bank car wash earlier in the year.

The Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad claimed one of the men, identified as Asaad al-Damj, 33, as a member, while the remainder were not immediately linked to any groups.

The Israeli military said, without specifying further, that it was backed by air power that struck and wounded the allegedly armed Palestinians.

The military also said it was looking into the reports of the other incidents.

In the refugee camp, debris was strewn along the streets of the densely populated urban neighborhood and the wall of one house had a large hole in it.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Israeli snipers were positioned on roofs and that military bulldozers were damaging roads and infrastructure.

Israel has clamped down on the West Bank since Oct. 7, closing crossings and checkpoints between Palestinian towns.

The intensified violence in the territory follows more than a year of escalating raids and arrests in the West Bank. Before the Hamas incursion, 2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in over two decades.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories as part of their hoped-for independent state.

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