Five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Tulkarem area, Wafa reported, while the Israeli military said it struck "five terrorists" on their way to carry out an attack.
According to Wafa, the drone fired two missiles at a vehicle which caught fire, killing five men.
The director of the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarem said in a statement that "five martyrs" had arrived at the facility after "an Israeli drone strike on a Palestinian vehicle close to the village of Zeita".
"The Israeli police are currently conducting a counterterrorism activity in the area of Tulkarem," the military said in a statement.
A witness at the scene of the strike told AFP: "I live less than 50 metres (yards) from here. We came (after) the sound of an explosion and saw a vehicle on fire" on the road towards Zeita, to the north of Tulkarem.
"Next to it, we saw a body lying on the road. Inside the vehicle, there were three charred bodies, from what we were able to see, completely burnt," said the witness named Nasser, who declined to have his last name published.
The Israeli military quickly sealed off the area, Wafa reported.
In a second air strike, hours later in the Tulkarem area, Wafa reported that four Palestinians were killed.
The military confirmed the aerial strike, saying "an additional terrorist cell was eliminated" as part of the ongoing counterterrorism activity there.
During the operation there was an encounter between troops and militants, after which Israeli soldiers called in an air strike, killing the four, the military said.
Alongside the Israel-Hamas war that began last October in the Gaza Strip, violence has intensified in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.
At least 603 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.
At least 17 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank alongside some three million Palestinians.
IDF strikes kill 26, wound dozens in Gaza, West Bank
Washington DC (UPI) Aug 3, 2024 -
Israel Defense Forces targeted a Hamas command center in northern Gaza and Hamas militants in the West Bank, which killed 26 and injured dozens more in separate airstrikes Saturday.
The Israeli Air Force "struck terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control center," which "was known as the Hamama school in the northern Gaza Strip," the IDF said in a statement Saturday.
An official for the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense said the IDF struck two schools in two airstrikes, which caused 17 deaths and injured dozens more.
The dead and injured include children and were taken to the nearby Baptist Hospital, GCD spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said Saturday.
He said the Al-Huda and Al-Hamama schools were struck in the dual airstrikes and are used to shelter Gazans who are displaced by the war between Hamas and Israel.
Basal described the airstrikes as a "double tap" in which an initial strike occurred followed by a warning of a second airstrike that rained three missiles down on the compound.
He said the first attack was unexpected but the IDF warned of a follow-up attack before the three additional missiles struck the compound.
The IDF also killed nine Hamas militants in two airstrikes in the West Bank.
IDF officials said they struck a vehicle carrying five Hamas militants, including a local commander, who were traveling to another location to carry out an attack early Saturday morning.
All five militants were killed in the attack that occurred on a road that connects the villages of Zeita and Qaffin.
A Hamas official confirmed all five in the vehicle were Hamas militants.
The IDF said it killed four more militants near Tulkarem after they fired on Israeli troops.
Gaza burns cases surge as medical supplies dwindle
Jerusalem (AFP) Aug 3, 2024 -
In Gaza City's Al-Ahli Hospital, five-year-old Amir Habib al-Habeel screams out in pain from the burns he suffered from an Israeli air strike on his home in Shujaiya a fortnight earlier.
He occupies a bed far from his mother, who also suffered burns, and who cannot move to be by her son's side.
Instead, her brother cares for him, the only available guardian after his "father was martyred", as the tearful child says, struggling to remove one of many IV tubes.
"We receive daily cases of second- and third-degree burns as a result of rocket attacks and the use of internationally banned weapons by the Israeli army," Amjad Eleiwa, an emergency doctor at the hospital, told AFP.
"Most of the cases that come to us are children and women. We don't have any capacity to deal with these burns," he said, explaining that they could not access any of the medical supplies needed to treat burns and had to resort instead to whatever was available in private warehouses and pharmacies.
"We are in dire need of medical and logistical support and medicine to deal with these cases and save them."
- Burn trauma unit -
Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims.
Julie Faucon, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders (MSF), told AFP some of the charity's specialists have been working for two months in Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis, "supporting what we call the trauma auto burn unit".
In that time, they have received "more than 69 cases with burns. One case out of five is related to explosions", the burns specialist said.
"Three out of four" of the patients they have received are children, she said, adding that 10 of the patients have had burns on more than 20 percent of their bodies.
According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning".
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did reply to a request for comment.
Mughayyir said the weapons reach extremely high temperatures and are "capable of melting bodies".
They often target "tent areas made up of nylon containing primitive materials such as wood and plastic, all of which directly affects the speed and rate of ignition", he added.
"These burns have a direct impact on people's lives and appearances. They affect skin layers and burn nerves, and there are people who become disabled as a result of that."
- No medical supplies -
The World Health Organization has said that out of 36 hospitals in the territory, only 15 are partially functional, adding that medical facilities have been targeted more than 1,000 times since war broke out on October 7.
Hamas's attack that day resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
Mohammed Zaqout, the head of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said "there is only Nasser Hospital in the southern areas, with 12 operating rooms, all of which are overcrowded".
"There are 16 beds in the intensive care units, all of which are occupied, and we have added a capacity of 24 beds but they are now full," he said.
"We try to distribute these cases to field hospitals, but the occupation's massacres against unarmed civilians occur on a daily and hourly basis, and no one in the world intervenes."
Access to treatment abroad has been blocked as most Palestinians cannot leave the besieged territory, as has the entry of most medical supplies, particularly since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt since early May.
Faucon similarly highlighted the urgent need for medical supplies, pointing to surging demand among extremely meagre stocks.
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