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The operation killed 21 people, including children, and caused widespread destruction of streets, homes and businesses, according to Palestinian news media and residents.
Israeli military forces appeared to withdraw on Friday from the Palestinian city of Jenin after a 10-day raid that killed 21 people, including children, and caused widespread destruction of streets, homes and businesses, according to Palestinian news media and residents.
ِHours after the Israeli military pulled back from the city, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian civil defense teams along with public works and utility employees fanned out to assess the damage and began the effort to restore essential services, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether all soldiers had left Jenin, or whether they would soon return. As Israeli forces have conducted one of their most extensive and deadly raids in the West Bank in years, they have pulled back from Palestinian cities and towns several times over the past week before coming back.
In a statement on Friday, the Israeli military did not comment on whether its troops were withdrawing. The statement said Israeli forces had killed 14 members of armed Palestinian groups in Jenin over the past week and a half, had detained more than 30 people suspected of being members of the groups or of planning attacks, and had found weapons and explosives.
The raids comes as U.S., Israeli and Iranian officials have said that Iran is operating a clandestine smuggling route across the Middle East to flood the Israeli-occupied territory with weapons in hopes of fomenting unrest among Palestinian militants against Israel.
Palestinian residents who had been trapped in their homes for days — as Israeli troops and bulldozers roamed Jenin — ventured into the streets Friday and some who had fled the raid returned. They found their neighborhoods unrecognizable.
