At least fifteen Palestinians were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City school that was housing displaced people on Saturday, hours after two strikes in the occupied West Bank killed nine militants, including a local Hamas commander, according to Hamas.
Targeting a militant group it claimed was en route to launch an attack, the Israeli military said the first of two West Bank airstrikes struck a car in a town close to Tulkarm.
According to a statement from Hamas, one of the dead was a commander of the organization’s Tulkarm brigades; the other four individuals were identified as militants for Islamic Jihad, the organization’s affiliate.
Hours later, a second airstrike in the area targeted another group of militants who had fired on troops, Israel’s military said, during what it described as a counter-terrorism operation in Tulkarm.
Palestinian news agency WAFA said four people had died in that strike, and Hamas said all nine of those killed in the two Israeli attacks in the West Bank were fighters.
Violence in the West Bank was on the rise before the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and has risen since, with frequent Israeli raids in the territory, which is among those that the Palestinians seek for a state.
There has also been an increase in anti-Israeli street attacks by Palestinians.
