Tulkarem:

The Israeli army said troops killed five Palestinian “terrorists” barricaded in a building during a 12-hour siege in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.

An AFP photographer saw a heavy military deployment in the village of Deir al-Ghusun, near the northern town of Tulkarem.

Troops deployed a bulldozer to flatten a building and carried at least one body out of the rubble, the photographer reported.

Israeli forces “engaged in an extensive 12-hour counterterrorism operation in the Tulkarem area,” the army and the Shin Bet security service said in a joint statement.

They said troops had come under fire after entering the village to “neutralise a terrorist cell” and had “retaliated” with “live ammunition, shoulder-fired missiles and other weaponry”.

An army drone registered two hits on the building before sappers moved in to “dismantle” it.

“The confrontation ended with the elimination of five terrorists, and the seizure of military gear and weapon components,” the joint statement said.

A member of a counterterrorism unit of Israel’s border police was wounded in the operation, it added.

The already restive West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7. At least 496 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP tally.

The Gaza war started with an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,654 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jenin, West Bank:

Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at them from a vehicle in the occupied West Bank, the military said on Saturday.

The military released a photo of two automatic rifles that it said were used by several gunmen to shoot at the soldiers, at an outpost near the flashpoint Palestinian city of Jenin.

The Jenin Brigade, an umbrella group that includes armed factions such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas, said the two gunmen were its members.

There was no other immediate comment from Palestinian officials in the West Bank, where violence has been on the rise as Israel presses its war against Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.

Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which Israel said 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage. More than 34,000 Palestinians have since been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry, and most of the population displaced.

Violence in the West Bank, which had already been on the rise before the war, has since flared with stepped-up Israeli raids and Palestinian street attacks.

The West Bank and Gaza, which Israel captured in a 1967 war, are among the territories which the Palestinians seek for a state. U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed a decade ago.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)