18 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike in West Bank's Tulkarem camp

At least 18 Palestinians were killed and several others injured in an Israeli air strike late Thursday on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the death toll in a statement. Earlier, it said that 16 people were killed in the attack.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said that “Israeli warplanes struck a popular cafe in the Al-Hamam neighborhood of the Tulkarem camp with at least one missile while several civilians were present".

Rescue services, including civil defense and ambulances, rushed to the scene and transported the bodies of those killed and injured to Martyr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital in Tulkarem, according to the news agency.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its teams transported the bodies of five people and one injured person to the hospital, Wafa added.

Following the air strike, the Israeli army said that one of its fighter jets targeted the Tulkarem refugee camp as part of a joint operation with the Shin Bet intelligence agency.

Later, the army said that it assassinated Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, the head of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in Tulkarem.

The army claimed that “Oufi planned and led the attempted car-bombing attack in Ateret on 02.09.2024".

“As part of his role, Oufi planned and led a significant amount of attacks directed toward communities in Judea and Samaria [in the occupied West Bank] and the rest of the Israeli Home Front".

The statement noted that “multiple other significant" Hamas members in Tulkarem were eliminated alongside Oufi".

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the air strike was the first of its kind carried out by an Israeli fighter jet in the occupied West Bank since the Second Intifada in 2000.