Concrete slabs and sheet metal were piled high alongside streets in Jenin on Saturday, as residents assessed the damage from Israel’s latest West Bank raid even as explosions persisted nearby.
The scars of ongoing clashes in the occupied Palestinian territory, which began on Wednesday as part of what Israel has described as a counter-terrorism operation, were everywhere: collapsed walls, uprooted trees, tiled roofs covering mounds of rubble.
Bulldozers rumbled through the streets on the first day of the raid, clearing the way for Israeli soldiers while tearing up the asphalt and piercing underground pipes, residents of one neighbourhood in east Jenin told AFP.
Three days later, with fighting elsewhere in the city continuing, “we are cut off from the world”, Taher al-Saadi said.
“The water is cut off. The electricity is cut off, the sewage system is no longer working. All the infrastructure is destroyed, we no longer have any services that work.”
He added: “The bakeries are at a standstill. We can’t find milk for the children.”
Israel raids are not unusual in Jenin, whose refugee camp is a bastion for armed groups fighting Israel.
But the operation launched on Wednesday was unusually large and long, hitting multiple West Bank cities at once and, in Jenin, showing no sign of letting up.
“I think it’s the worst day since the start of the raid,” Wisam Bakr, director of Jenin Government Hospital, said on Saturday.
“We hear from time to time clashes and sometimes there is big bombing.”