Nine people have been killed in two Israeli air strikes on the city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said the Israeli army killed four people in a second air strike on the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm, hours after killing a Hamas commander and four other Palestinians in another strike.
Wafa, citing local sources, said Israeli forces hit a car near the village of Bal’a, killing four people. The agency added that they blocked ambulances from reaching the scene.
Earlier, the Israeli army said it had killed five people, including a Hamas commander identified as a leader of one of its Tulkarm brigades.
The director of the Thabet Thabet hospital in Tulkarem said in a statement that “five martyrs” had arrived at the facility after “an Israeli drone strike on a Palestinian vehicle close to the village of Zeita”.
The Israeli military said that police were “currently conducting a counterterrorism activity in the area of Tulkarem”.
More than 8,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October, according to Palestinian prisoner groups.
At least 603 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in the West Bank since October.
Prisoners have been subjected to physical assault and other violations, including starvation, sleep deprivation, cutting off contact with their families and the withholding of water.