West Bank under siege: Israeli military operation in Jenin turns refugee camp into ghost town

The Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank is heading in a “catastrophic direction”, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday, adding that residents had “endured the impossible”. Some officials described the city as a ghost town, saying that the military action is destroying on a scale not seen there for over 20 years.

Israel’s military says the large-scale raid is aimed at suppressing Iranian-backed militant groups in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Two weeks after the military operation began, Jenin is largely deserted. Thousands of Palestinians have left their homes, taking only what they could carry, after Israel told them to leave through drones with loudspeakers.

After destroying roadways and other infrastructure, Israeli forces demolished multiple buildings at the weekend, causing loud explosions.

”We stayed at home until the drone came to us and started calling for us to evacuate the house and evacuate the neighbourhood because they wanted to carry out an explosion,” said 39-year-old Khalil Huwail, a father of four who left with his family.

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”We left in the clothes we were wearing. We couldn’t carry anything, that was forbidden,” he said. ”The camp is completely empty.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli army said two soldiers were killed in a shooting attack on a military post in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

A further six soldiers were lightly wounded when “a terrorist fired at the soldiers at a military post in Tayasir” in the north of the territory, the army added.

With inputs from agencies