JENIN, West Bank, (Reuters) – Israeli forces backed by the rare use of helicopter gunships killed five Palestinians including a teenager and wounded more than 90, as a West Bank raid led to an hours-long gunbattle with armed fighters, the military and health officials said.
Eight Israeli personnel were wounded after troops came under fire during an operation in the flashpoint city of Jenin to arrest two Palestinians suspected in attacks, the military said. At least three of the Palestinians killed in the fighting belonged to the armed Islamic Jihad group.
With U.S.-sponsored peacemaking stalled for almost a decade, Jenin and other areas of the northern West Bank have been a focus of months of stepped-up sweeps by Israel amid a spate of Palestinian street attacks in its cities.
As troops faced heavy fire and a rain of explosive devices from gunmen in the city, the army was forced to mount an extraction mission to pull out the wounded and a number of its vehicles blocked in the fighting, it said.
“So that’s why you saw also our forces in a very problematic area and we had to bring in a helicopter,” an army spokesman told reporters.
The unusual use of helicopter gunships in the operation underlined the intensity of the fighting in Jenin, where armed militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad have long had a strong presence in the adjoining refugee camp.
Bezalel Smotrich, the head of one of the parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition, said the government should launch a broad offensive operation “to restore deterrence” in Jenin, Nablus and other West Bank areas.
“It’s time for the gloves to come off,” he said.
