The Israeli military said it had killed five Palestinian fighters inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in the midst of one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.
The overall toll of 16 Palestinians killed in less than two days would make it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since 7 October and the attack in Israel by Hamas which ignited the Gaza war.
The latest fighting came as the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Thursday he had formally asked the bloc’s members to consider imposing sanctions on some Israeli ministers for “hate messages” against Palestinians that he said broke international law.
Borrell did not name any of the Israeli ministers to whom he was referring, nor specify which messages he had in mind. But in recent weeks he has publicly criticised Israel’s security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, for statements he has described as “sinister” and “an incitement to war crimes”.
The second day of the Israeli operation, which has seen as many as three brigades of troops deployed in several major West Bank cities backed by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers, also included raids in the northern city of Jenin and in the Jordan valley.
The Israeli operation comes amid mounting fears over the trajectory of the already serious violence in the West Bank, which has been fuelled by the actions of far-right settlers and their supporters in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In recent weeks Israeli defence officials have voiced their fears that the situation in the West Bank could boil over, turning the territory into a major new front in Israel’s ongoing conflicts, even as the war in Gaza continues and tensions remain high with Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon.
Hamas repeated its calls for Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up, calling the raids part of a larger plan to expand the war in Gaza. The militant group has called on security forces loyal to the western-backed Palestinian Authority to “join the sacred battle of our people”.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has also condemned the Israeli raids, but his forces were not expected to get involved.
Referring to the latest West Bank assault, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a post on X overnight: “This is a war in every sense, and we must win it.” He accused Iran of working to destabilise Jordan and establish an eastern front against Israel via arms smuggling networks, as it has done in Gaza and in Lebanon.
To address the threat of an eastern front, Katz said Israel would have to use “all necessary means, including, in cases of intense combat, allowing the population to temporarily evacuate from one neighbourhood to another to prevent civilian harm”.
Among those killed on Thursday was a local Islamic Jihad commander named as Mohammed Jaber. According to Palestinian reports, troops dressed in civilian clothes entered the mosque where an exchange of fire occurred.
Thursday’s fatalities come a day after Palestinian health authorities said at least 12 Palestinians were killed in Wednesday’s operations.
The continuing operation came as the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called on Israel to halt its military operation in the northern West Bank immediately. “Latest developments in the occupied West Bank, including Israel’s launch of large-scale military operations, are deeply concerning,” Guterres wrote on X.
The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions said in separate statements on Wednesday their gunmen were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Far’a, a town in the Jordan Valley.
Describing his request to consider sanctions against Israeli ministers, Borrell told reporters on his arrival at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels: “I initiated the procedure to ask the member states if they consider [it] appropriate to include in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians, and proposing things that clearly go against international law.”
Diplomats say it is unlikely the EU would find the necessary unanimous agreement among its 27 members to impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers, however.
Agencies contributed to this report