The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had killed five Palestinian “terrorists” near Tulkarem, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, after a twelve-hour siege of a village, during which an Israeli soldier was injured.

In the village of Deir al-Wusun, an AFP photojournalist found the presence of a strong force of the Israeli army, which blocked roads around a building before it was demolished by construction machinery. Soldiers removed and took at least one body from the building.

During an “operation to neutralize a terrorist cell,” Israeli forces “surrounded a building,” the military said in a press release. After “coming under fire (…) the security forces retaliated”, especially with rockets.

“An army drone targeted and hit the building twice, while Engineer units attempted to demolish it,” reads the text released by the Israeli army.

The conflict “ended with the elimination of five terrorists and the seizure of military equipment and weapons.”

An Israeli soldier was wounded during the operation, he added.

The West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has turned in recent years into a theater of bloody violence that does not stop escalating. The situation worsened further after October 7, when the military arm of Hamas attacked southern sectors of Israeli territory centered on the Gaza Strip. In retaliation, the Israeli military launched large-scale military operations in the enclave.

At least 496 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military or Jewish settler fire in the West Bank since the Israel/Hamas war broke out. This period has also seen at least 19 Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and in Israel, according to figures from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence agency.