At least 18 people were killed in an Israeli air attack on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The strike landed in a dense camp that has been repeatedly affected by the widening conflict that began after the October 2023 war in Gaza.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets carried out the attack in coordination with the Shin Bet internal security service. It later said the target was the head of Hamas’s infrastructure in Tulkarem. The Palestinian group did not immediately comment on that claim, leaving the immediate public record split between the Israeli military’s stated objective and the Palestinian casualty count.
Al Jazeera’s report described severe destruction in the camp, northwest of Nablus, with verified footage showing piles of wreckage and fires after the strike. Rescuers were seen rushing injured people to hospital. A camp official told AFP the strike had been carried out with an F-16 fighter, underscoring the scale of the attack and the fact that it was not a routine ground raid.
The location matters. The Tulkarem refugee camp is home to more than 21,000 people living in just 0.18 square kilometres, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. That density helps explain why a single air attack can have such a large casualty toll and why even limited strikes can produce a major humanitarian impact.
The broader pattern is also clear in the supplied evidence. The United Nations humanitarian office said 695 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank between October 7, 2023 and the end of September, with the vast majority attributed to the Israeli army. Al Jazeera said the attack appeared to be the largest and deadliest air strike in the occupied West Bank for more than 20 years.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman condemned the strike as a heinous crime against civilians. The UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories had recently warned of a dangerous escalation in the northern West Bank, saying systematic aerial and ground attacks had intensified in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas.
That context matters because the Tulkarem strike was not an isolated event but part of a broader surge in violence across the West Bank. It also shows how the war in Gaza has continued to reshape security conditions elsewhere, with the West Bank moving closer to the center of the conflict. The supplied evidence does not resolve the competing claims about the target, but it does make clear that the strike was deadly, destructive and politically charged.
