Since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, there has been a dramatic rise in violence in the West Bank, where the Israeli army has stepped up incursions targeting Palestinian groups.

Israeli forces carried out an operation overnight in a refugee camp in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank long considered a centre of extremist activity.

“An armed terrorist cell that fired at Israeli security forces was struck by a (military) aircraft,” an army statement said.

“Terrorists who fired and hurled explosive devices at the security forces were neutralised,” it added. “In total, at least five terrorists were killed.”

The military said “terrorists and gunmen fled the area in vehicles and ambulances toward the area of the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin in order to hide there”, and that a vehicle was stopped at the hospital entrance.

It released footage that appeared to show weapons being removed from a vehicle outside a hospital.

Israel consistently says Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip are using hospitals as a base for their attacks, a charge the Islamist group routinely denies.

Hamas said three of its fighters were killed in Jenin.

AFP journalists there saw a funeral procession for three people this morning, trailed by dozens of mourners as well as fighters firing into the air.

The Hamas movement nearly six weeks ago surged out of Gaza and killed 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and seized around 240 hostages, according to Israel.

In retaliation for the Oct 7 attacks, Israel launched bombardments and a ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza, which authorities in the Hamas-run territory say have killed at least 11,500 people, mostly civilians.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah also said three people had been killed in the Jenin raid and 15 wounded, four critically.

The raid was the third major Israeli incursion in Jenin in as many weeks.

An incursion last week resulted in 14 Palestinian deaths – according to the health ministry – in the deadliest single raid in the West Bank since at least 2005, according to United Nations data.