Israeli military blows up buildings in West Bank refugee camp

(Adds dropped word ‘did’ in paragraph 5)

RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli military blew up buildings in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Sunday in an operation that the Palestinian state news agency said leveled around 20 buildings.

Footage capturing the demolitions showed a series of simultaneous explosions in the densely populated camp.

Thick clouds of smoke rose above the Palestinian city where Israeli forces have been conducting a major military operation for nearly two weeks that the Israeli military says is targeting Palestinian militant fighters and the seizure of weapons stockpiles.

The Israeli military said 23 structures had been “dismantled” in the northern West Bank after explosives laboratories, weapons and observation posts were uncovered by its forces.

In a previous statement on Sunday it shared images of firearms, ammunition, and what appeared to be gas canisters. It did not say where exactly those images were taken.

Jenin Government Hospital Director Wisam Baker told the Palestinian state news agency that part of the hospital was damaged in the explosions but that there had been no casualties.

Jenin is home to a crowded refugee camp of descendants of Palestinians who were driven out, or fled their homes, in the 1948 war when the state of Israel was established. The refugee camp there has been a centre of militant activity for decades and the target of repeated raids by Israeli security forces.

Israeli forces, backed by helicopters and armoured bulldozers, began the assault on the city on Jan. 21, two days after a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and the militant group Hamas took effect.

Israel regards the West Bank as one part of a multi-front war against Iranian-backed groups established around its borders, from Gaza to Lebanon and including the Houthis in Yemen, and it turned its attention to the area immediately after the halt to fighting in Gaza.

The United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees has said that almost all of the Jenin camp’s 20,000 residents have been displaced over the past two months.

Hamas on Sunday called for an “escalation in the resistance” against Israel following the demolition of buildings in Jenin.

The Palestinian Authority, a Hamas rival, exercises limited governance over the West Bank where around 3 million Palestinians live and over which Israel maintains overall military control.

Israeli forces have engaged in gun battles with local militants since the operation began. Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said security forces would stay until the operation is complete, without saying when that would be.

At least 25 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli military operation began in Jenin, including nine members of armed groups, a 73-year-old man and a two-year-old girl, according to Palestinian officials. The Israeli military says it has killed at least 35 militants and detained over 100 wanted individuals.

The Palestinian state news agency also said that a 27-year-old man had been killed on Sunday by Israeli forces raiding a refugee camp near Hebron.

(This story has been refiled to add the dropped word ‘did’ in paragraph 5)

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Ros Russell)