Israeli army raids refugee camp near West Bank city of Jericho

The Israeli army has raided a refugee camp near the Palestinian city of Jericho, besieging houses it said were being used as hideouts for Palestinian attackers and shooting at residents who opened fire.

The fighting wounded six Palestinians, two seriously, said the Palestinian Health Ministry, in the generally quiet oasis town that has seen less violence than other West Bank cities.

The army said it entered the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp south-west of Jericho in the occupied West Bank to search for suspects involved in a shooting attack last week at a nearby Israeli settlement.

Last Saturday, with the West Bank on edge after the deadliest Israeli military raid in two decades and two subsequent Palestinian attacks in east Jerusalem that killed seven people, the army said a Palestinian gunman had opened fire in a restaurant at a settlement near Jericho.

The army said several Palestinians had holed up in their homes after the shooting with the help of family and were planning future attacks.

To force the fugitives to surrender, a military bulldozer clawed at the walls of one of the homes as an Israeli commander shouted threats over a loudspeaker. Camp residents reported receiving text messages urging families to keep their children inside and avoid clashing with Israeli troops.

The suspects and family members trickled out of one of the homes and turned themselves in, the military said.

Security forces had levelled much of the house, leaving a pile of rubble and twisted metal.

Palestinian protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at military jeeps as they rumbled down the camp streets, while some gunmen opened fire. The Israeli military fired back, wounding six, officials said.

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

The Israeli army has ramped up near-nightly raids in the occupied West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks within Israel last spring. Over the last year and a half of escalating raids, Jericho has remained a sort of sleepy desert town, spared much of the violence.

Since last week’s shooting at the nearby settlement, the Israeli military has blocked access to several roads into Jericho – a closure that has placed the city under a semi-blockade, disrupting business and creating hours-long bottlenecks at checkpoints that affected even Palestinian security forces, footage showed.

The Palestinian Authority, in retaliation for last week’s raid into the Jenin refugee camp that killed 10 Palestinians, declared a halt to security co-ordination with Israel.

Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest in those areas since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Some 30 people were killed in Israel by Palestinians in 2022.

The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting against the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.