Jenin (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israel said it killed three Hamas militants in an air strike in the occupied West Bank on Friday, taking the death toll from a large-scale military operation now in its third day to at least 19.

A top UN aid official meanwhile questioned “what has become of our basic humanity”, as the war raged on in Gaza where humanitarian operations struggled to respond.

In the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged she will not change Washington’s policy of supplying weapons to Israel if elected to the top job in November. But she stressed it was time to “end this war” in Gaza.

Israel has described its raids on towns and refugee camps across the northern West Bank as “counter-terrorism” operations.

They have killed at least 19 Palestinians since Wednesday, the military and the Palestinian health ministry said.

Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said at least 13 of those killed were their fighters.

The military said it killed three Hamas militants in an air strike near the northern city of Jenin on Friday.

Witnesses told AFP the strike hit a car in the town of Zababdeh, southeast of the city.

Israeli troops pulled back from other West Bank towns late Thursday but fighting raged on around Jenin, long a hub of militant activity.

An AFP journalist reported loud explosions from the city’s refugee camp and thick plumes of smoke rising from the area.

- Vaccination ‘pauses’ -

In Gaza, Israeli artillery pounded western areas of Gaza City early Friday, an AFP journalist said, while a medical source at the southern Nasser Hospital said an Israeli strike killed three people near the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The World Health Organization said Israel had agreed to at least three days of “humanitarian pauses” in parts of Gaza, starting Sunday, to facilitate a vaccination drive after the territory recorded its first case of polio in a quarter of a century.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the measures were “not a ceasefire” in the nearly 11-month war.

The Israeli assault on the West Bank has caused significant destruction, especially in Tulkarem, whose governor Mustafa Taqatqa described the raids as “unprecedented” and a “dangerous signal”.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said at least 45 people had been detained in the West Bank since Wednesday. An Israeli military spokesman said “10 wanted individuals were arrested”.

Britain on Friday said it was “deeply” concerned by the raids, urging Israel to “exercise restraint” and adhere to international law.

France said the Israeli operations “worsen a climate of unprecedented instability and violence”, while Spain denounced “an outbreak of violence which is clearly unacceptable”.

Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that at least 637 Palestinians had been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war began.

Nineteen Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during army operations over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.

- ‘Basic sense of humanity’ -

Israeli shelling in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed two people on Friday, the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled territory said.

The acting head of the UN humanitarian office, Joyce Msuya, said “more than 88 percent of Gaza’s territory has come under an (Israeli) order to evacuate at some point”, adding civilians were being forced into just 11 percent of the Gaza Strip.

“It forces us to ask: what has become of our basic sense of humanity?”

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Palestinians militants also seized 251 hostages, 103 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,602 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The war has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of its 2.4 million people and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

The military on Friday said it had wrapped up a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters.

Some Palestinians returned to find massive destruction in parts of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and the main southern city of Khan Yunis.

In Khan Yunis, Amal al-Astal, 48, said: “We found our house destroyed and our neighbours’ (houses) destroyed as well. One of our neighbours’ corpses was decomposed there.”

Mohamed Abu Thuria told AFP he had “found massive destruction everywhere” on returning to Deir el-Balah.

The Gaza war has drawn in Iran-backed fighters from across the region, including Lebanon and Yemen, sparking fears that it could spread into a wider conflagration.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix on Friday warned that “there is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level”.

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