Israeli raid kills, injures Palestinians in occupied West Bank's Jenin

Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank have killed five Palestinians in a raid that marked a rare use of Israeli airpower in the Palestinian territory.

The Palestinian health ministry said five people had been killed and at least 91 others were wounded in the violence on Monday.

Among the injured was Palestinian journalist Hazem Nasser, who was hospitalised with a gunshot wound, according to the Palestinian journalists syndicate.

The sound of gunfire was heard across Jenin as wounded Palestinians continued to arrive by ambulance to the northern West Bank city's Ibn Sina hospital into the early afternoon, an AFP journalist said.

Crowds, among them Palestinian gunmen, gathered outside Jenin government hospital, as the funerals of those killed in eleven hours of fighting began.

The Israeli army said an Apache helicopter had fired missiles to help its soldiers, in a rare move in the occupied West Bank.

"We had five Israeli border police guys wounded, and two soldiers also lightly wounded," Israeli army spokesperson Richard Hecht said. "From that point, we had to extract our injured."

Hussein al-Sheikh, Palestine's civil affairs minister, said a "fierce and open war is being waged against the Palestinian people... by the occupation (Israeli) forces".

He called for the Palestinian leadership to take "unprecedented decisions" without elaborating.

The Palestinian health minister, Mai al-Kaila, called in a statement for the "urgent" dispatch of blood and medical supplies to Jenin.

In a statement, Türkiye says it "strongly condemned" the attacks by the Israeli forces.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry also condemned what it called Israel’s “continued escalation against the Palestinians,” saying it only further inflamed the situation and undermined efforts to reduce regional tensions.

The fighting was the latest in more than a year of near-daily Israeli violence that has wracked the occupied West Bank.

Israel and Palestine have been gripped by months of violence, focused mainly in the occupied West Bank, where some 120 Palestinians have been killed this year.

Israel has been staging near-nightly raids in the occupied territories. It says most of the dead were, what they call "militants," but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

In response, Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed at least 20 people this year.