Funerals held in raided West Bank city after Israeli forces withdraw

The families of Palestinians killed in an air strike in the occupied West Bank city of Tubas held funerals on Friday after Israeli forces withdrew following their latest raid in the territory.

Violence in the Palestinian territory had already soared alongside the nearly 12-month-old war in Gaza but in late August Israel began large-scale raids that residents say marked an escalation.

A military statement on Friday said Israeli forces had "conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation" in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Faraa, killing "five armed terrorists" in an air strike and a sixth in "exchanges of fire" with "a terrorist that hurled explosive devices".

Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes occurring "at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades," the United Nations human rights chief said this week.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the military withdrew from Tubas on Thursday evening, allowing the funerals to go ahead.

The four men buried in Tubas on Friday were killed in the air strike, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society said occurred at dawn on Wednesday.

On Friday morning, hundreds of people including armed Palestinian militants walked through the streets of Tubas alongside the four bodies hoisted on stretchers and wrapped in white cloth.

Some in the crowd waved the green flag of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and gunfire punctuated the mourners' chants.

"I woke up in the morning to the sound of an explosion," Ahmed Sawafta, father of one of the dead men, told AFP, describing the strike on Wednesday.

"My brothers came and told me that Yassin had been martyred," he said, referring to his son.

The fifth fatality from the strike was buried on Friday in Tamun, also in the northern West Bank.

Osaid Kharaz, who identified himself as a Hamas activist, told AFP at the funeral in Tubas that Israel "is attempting to impose a new reality and undermine the popular support for the resistance (to Israeli occupation) in the West Bank."

  'Full strength'  

The military will use its "full strength" to strike Palestinian militants in the West Bank, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on September 4 during a large-scale operation in the north of the territory that killed dozens and which is ongoing.

He said he had ordered the military to carry out air strikes "wherever necessary" in order to "avoid endangering soldiers".

Among those killed at the time were five people in a car hit by an air strike in Tubas, Palestinian medics said. The military reported striking "an armed terrorist cell."

Days later, the European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell said Israel aimed "to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza."

Israeli forces this week also carried out operations in the northern West Bank governorate of Tulkarem.

A military statement on Friday reported four fatalities "in the areas of Tulkarem and Nur Shams".

It said "three of the terrorists were eliminated in an aerial strike on Wednesday, and the fourth terrorist was eliminated during close-quarters combat with the security forces".

One of those killed in the air strike "was suspected of killing" a border police officer last October, the statement said.

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the three killed in the strike were its fighters.

Wafa reported that Israeli forces also withdrew from Tulkarem on Thursday and that funerals were held there on Friday.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and has ramped up deadly raids in the territory since Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 679 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military or settlers since October 7.

At least 24 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory during the same period, according to Israeli officials.