Israel army says West Bank air strike kills 4 militants

The Israeli military said on Thursday that an air strike killed four militants in the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank.

Jenin is a bastion of Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, and has been a focus of large-scale Israeli military raids launched in late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have killed dozens.

"A short while ago, the (Israel Defense Forces) struck armed terrorists operating within a vehicle in the area of Qabatiya in Jenin, as part of a counterterrorism operation," the military said in a statement to AFP.

A separate statement on its website said "an aircraft eliminated four terrorists in the Jenin area".

AFP photographed two male bodies on the roof of a building in Qabatiya, and a third corpse lying on a sheet of metal one floor below.

Since the large-scale raids began in late August, Hamas and another group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have claimed at least 14 of the fatalities as members.

Israeli forces have also arrested dozens of Palestinians and left widespread destruction in what European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell last week said aimed "to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza".

Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes occurring "at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades," the United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, said on September 9.

Violence in the West Bank has surged alongside the war in Gaza which began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

Since October 7, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 682 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 24 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian militant attacks during the same period, Israeli officials say.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but the current raids as well as comments by Israeli officials mark an escalation, residents say.