Tel Aviv attack latest: Israel launches airstrikes on Gaza Strip as toll in Jenin rises to 12

The Israeli military withdrew its troops from a militant stronghold on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, ending an intense two-day operation that killed at least 12 Palestinians and drove thousands of people from their homes.

Witnesses reported seeing convoys of military vehicles leaving the Jenin refugee camp following one of its most extensive operations in two decades.

During the raid, the army said it had uncovered militant hideouts, arms depots and an underground shaft used to store explosives.

The army said it has dismantled six explosives manufacturing facilities and three operational situation rooms in Jenin.

“The weapons were located in hideouts, a mosque, pits concealed in civilian areas, operational situation rooms, and in vehicles,” it said.

UN agencies expressed their alarm on Tuesday after it emerged that at least three children were among those killed by Israeli forces during their raids in the Jenin refugee camp of the occupied West Bank.

Israel on Monday launched one of its biggest operations in the refugee camp in 20 years, carrying out a series of drone strikes and sending in bulldozers and hundreds of troops who engaged in extensive gun battles, forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee the camps through alleyways.

In the West Bank, a spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office said they are “alarmed at the scale of air and ground operations that are taking place in Jenin… and airstrikes hitting a densely populated refugee camp”.

Hamas said that “all options for supporting Jenin and its heroes were on the table” during the operation as the Israeli forces began to leave the refugee camp in occupied West Bank.

“We have sent clear messages to the enemy through all parties that the resistance in all arenas is not far from what is happening, and the enemy must stop its aggression immediately,” said Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau.

“We say to the enemy that the time has passed when you practice your aggression against our people without paying the price, and Jenin is today teaching you a lesson in resistance and steadfastness.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had evacuated 500 families from the camp, around 3,000 people.

Jihad Hassan, 63, who fled the camp after his son was wounded, said a drone strike had prompted him to leave.“You don’t hear a sound, you just see the explosion,” he said, as he waited with his son at the Jenin Government Hospital.

“It is something, when a person is forced to leave their home.”Around 100 people have been injured, the Palestinian health ministry said, 20 of them seriously.

Israeli and Palestinian officials reported fighting near a hospital in Jenin late on Tuesday.

Doctors Without Borders accused the Israeli army of firing tear gas into a hospital, filling the emergency room with smoke and forcing emergency patients to be treated in a main hall.

Palestinian hospital officials told the official Wafa news agency that three civilians were hit by Israeli fire.

Kefah Ja’ayyasah, a camp resident, said soldiers forcibly entered her home and locked the family inside.

“They took the young men of my family to the upper floor, and they left the women and children trapped in the apartment at the first floor,” she told Associated Press.

She claimed soldiers would not let her take food to the children and blocked an ambulance crew from entering the home when she yelled for help, before eventually allowing the family passage to a hospital.

Israeli forces launched an airstrike on the Gaza Strip in response to five rockets launched toward Israeli territory.

The Shehab news outlet reports strikes near al-Baydar, west of Gaza City, and in Beit Lahiyeh in the north of the strip.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli army said militants in the Gaza Strip launched five rockets into Israel.

It said all of the rockets were “successfully intercepted”, but the launches raised the risk of fighting on a second front.

Thousands have fled Israel’s biggest military operation into the occupied West Bank in decades, as a car-ramming in Tel Aviv underlined the risk of violence spreading.

At least 12 Palestinians, including three children, have been killed and over 100 injured during Israel’s raid in the Jenin refugee camp which started with a drone strike on Monday.

The United Nations has said Israeli military bulldozers destroyed key roads, stopping ambulances from entering the camp, which has lost access to drinking water, electricity and in some areas food supplies.

“At this moment we are completing the mission, and I can say that our extensive activity in Jenin is not a one-time operation,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.