TEL AVIV — Israel’s largest operation in the occupied West Bank in two decades entered its second day on Tuesday, with intense raids, ambushes and firefights that have killed at least 10 Palestinians, forced thousands to flee their homes and included bulldozers reducing parts of the Jenin refugee camp to rubble.
In a signal that the operation could soon be completed, the Israeli military said it had 10 targets remaining in Jenin. Far-right members of the government have called for a long-term occupation of the city, which has emerged over the past year as a hotbed for Palestinian militancy.
“There is no point in the camp that we have not been, including the center,” Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, tweeted, adding that soldiers expected to engage with armed militants throughout the day on Tuesday.
The Israeli army said that overnight, it dismantled an “underground shaft that was used to store explosive devices in the heart of the Jenin Camp.” The statement added that soldiers destroyed “two operational situation rooms belonging to terrorist organizations in the area … a grenade launcher in the area of Jenin, and confiscated weapons and military equipment.”
Hagari said that all of the 10 Palestinians killed and 120 arrested since the start of the operation on Monday were combatants. According to the Red Cross, an estimated 3,000 Palestinians fled the camp overnight.
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