Israeli airstrike on Tubas kills five in occupied West Bank amid ground raids

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Wednesday that at least five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the city of Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank.

The drone attack occurred near a mosque around dawn, the Red Crescent reported, which coincides with the storming of several other villages and towns in and around Tubas.

Israeli forces then launched a wide-scale incursion into the city’s outskirts and neighbourhoods in the early hours of dawn, as part of a massive military assault on the occupied West Bank.

An eyewitness told the AFP that Israeli forces were "storming the city of Tubas and the town of Tammun to the east".

Israel declared a curfew in the city and spread its forces across the northern areas of the entire Tubas area.

This incursion was accompanied by intense surveillance drone and helicopter flights at low altitudes over the skies of the governorate, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Red Crescent spokesman Ahmed Jibril told AFP that the dead and injured were “transferred to the Turkish Government Hospital in Tubas”.

During the ground assault, Israeli forces surrounded the Turkish Governmental Hospital, located on the northern outskirts of the city, reportedly preventing ambulances carrying injured Palestinians from reaching the hospital due to roadblocks. The military presence around the city was also reinforced.

The assault on Tubas coincided with Israeli military attacks on other parts of the West Bank on Wednesday, with homes being raised and roads being bulldozed in Tulkarm and parts of Nabulus. 

Elsewhere, a 20-year-old Israeli was critically injured when a propane-carrying fuel truck collided with a bus stop near the unauthorised Givat Assaf outpost in the West Bank.

The truck driver, named as 58-year-old, Ayil Issa Abd al-Jabbar Deif was shot dead by Israeli forces at the scene of the incident. 

At the end of August, Israel launched a large-scale offensive across the northern West Bank, including the Tubas area, killing several civilians and leaving widespread destruction, as Israel says it is targets militant groups across the occupied territory.

Last week, Palestinian medics said an air strike on a car in Tubas killed five people.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank since 1967 and has ramped up deadly raids in the territory since the beginning of its war on Gaza on 7 October last year with at least 698 Palestinians killed by Israeli military and settlers since 7 October.

Agencies contributed to this report