By Ronaldo Schemidt

JENIN – The death toll from a three-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank rose to 20 on Friday (30), Israel and the Palestinian Red Crescent said, while violence raged on in the Gaza Strip.

It came as US-based aid group Anera said an Israeli strike killed four Palestinians accompanying its convoy on Thursday (29). The Israeli military reported it had struck armed assailants.

The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) on Wednesday (28) said it had suspended aid operations after one of its vehicles was hit by an Israeli strike.

In the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged she would not change Washington’s policy of supplying weapons to Israel if elected to the top job in November. But she stressed it was time to “end this war” in Gaza.

Israel has described its raids on towns and refugee camps across the northern West Bank as “counter-terrorism” operations.

They have killed at least 20 Palestinians since Wednesday, the military and the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said at least 13 of those killed were their fighters.

The military earlier said it killed four Hamas militants in an air strike near the northern city of Jenin on Friday.

Witnesses told AFP the strike hit a car in the town of Zababdeh, southeast of the city.

Israeli troops pulled back from other West Bank towns late Thursday but fighting raged on around Jenin, long a hub of militant activity.

An AFP journalist reported loud explosions from the city’s refugee camp and thick plumes of smoke rising from the area.

– Vaccination ‘pauses’ –

In Gaza, Israeli artillery pounded western areas of Gaza City early Friday, an AFP journalist said, while a medical source at the southern Nasser Hospital said an Israeli strike killed three people near the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Israel had agreed to at least three days of “humanitarian pauses” in parts of Gaza, starting Sunday (Sept 2), to facilitate a vaccination drive after the territory recorded its first case of polio in a quarter of a century.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the measures were “not a ceasefire”.

The Israeli assault on the West Bank has caused significant destruction, especially in Tulkarem, whose governor Mustafa Taqatqa described the raids as “unprecedented” and a “dangerous signal”.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said at least 45 people had been detained in the West Bank since Wednesday. The Israeli military said it had “apprehended 17 suspects linked to terrorist activists”.

Britain on Friday said it was “deeply” concerned by the raids, urging Israel to “exercise restraint” and adhere to international law.

France said the Israeli operations “worsen a climate of unprecedented instability and violence”, while Spain denounced “an outbreak of violence which is clearly unacceptable”.

Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that at least 637 Palestinians had been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war began.

Nineteen Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during army operations over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.

– ‘Basic sense of humanity’ –

Israeli shelling in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed two people on Friday, the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled territory said.

The acting head of the UN Humanitarian Office (OCHA), Joyce Msuya, said “more than 88% of Gaza’s territory has come under an (Israeli) order to evacuate at some point”, adding civilians were being forced into just 11%  of the Gaza Strip.

“It forces us to ask: what has become of our basic sense of humanity?”

OCHA on Friday said that “in August, the number of humanitarian missions and movements within Gaza that have been denied access by Israeli authorities has almost doubled, compared with July”.

The Israeli military body tasked with governing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, meanwhile said “3,577 aid pallets from international organizations began unloading at the Port of Ashdod after being transported by sea from Cyprus”.

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, 103 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,602 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The war has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of its 2.4 million people and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

The military on Friday said it had wrapped up a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters.

Some Palestinians returned to find massive destruction in parts of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and the main southern city of Khan Yunis.

In Khan Yunis, Amal al-Astal, 48, said: “We found our house destroyed and our neighbours’ (houses) destroyed as well. One of our neighbours’ corpses was decomposed there.”

Mohamed Abu Thuria told AFP he had “found massive destruction everywhere” on returning to Deir el-Balah.

The Gaza war has drawn in Iran-backed fighters from across the region, including Lebanon and Yemen, sparking fears that it could spread into a wider conflagration.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix on Friday warned that “there is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level”.

– Agence France-Presse