Dozens of Palestinian families have had to flee the Nur Shams refugee camp [Getty]
Dozens of Palestinian families fled on Monday from the Nur Shams refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank, as Israel pushed on with a brutal military attack.
“We hear explosions and bombings as well as bulldozers. It’s a tragedy. They are doing here what they did in Gaza,” said Ahmed Ezza, a resident.
Ahmed Abu Zahra, another resident of the camp which is on the outskirts of Tulkarm, said he was forced to leave his home.
“The (Israeli) army came and we were forced to leave after they started destroying our homes”.
Three Palestinians, including two women and a young man, were killed on Sunday in Nur Shams, the health ministry in the territory said.
Israel said its military police had opened an investigation into the death of one of them, a woman who was eight months pregnant.
It said on Saturday it had launched an operation in Nur Shams, part of a much larger campaign that began in January in Tulkarm and Jenin.
In the streets of Nur Shams camp, under a light rain, residents were fleeing.
An AFP photographer saw dozens of families hastily leaving the camp, while bulldozers carried out large-scale demolitions amid gunfire and explosions.
According to Murad Alyan, from the camp’s popular committee, “more than half of the 13,000 inhabitants have fled out of fear for their lives”.
Since January 21, the Israeli military has been conducting a major attack in the “triangle” of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem, where half a million Palestinians live.
Israel claims it is targeting “terrorist infrastructure”. Jenin in particular is a stronghold of armed Palestinian groups.
‘They destroy everything’
“What we are living through is without precedent,” Ahmad al-Assaad, the governor of Tubas, told AFP.
The Israeli operations “today did not target fighters, but civilians, women and children, and they blew houses to pressure residents into leaving”.
According to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, Israel was pursuing an “all-our war on the Palestinian people”.
“Since the ceasefire began in Gaza, the West Bank has been on fire”, it said in a post on X, referring to the truce agreement that halted Israel’s war on Gaza on January 19.
“The objective of these operations is not security-related, but political,” said Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Tulkarm.
“They destroy everything”, he said of the Israeli military. “They are trying to change the demographics of the region.”
The Palestinian foreign ministry accused Israel of applying “the same policy of destruction” in the West Bank as in Gaza.
Israel increased its attacks on the West Bank ever since the war in Gaza began in October 2023
At least 887 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military or settlers, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
