Israeli air strike kills five Palestinians in occupied West Bank’s Tubas

At least five people were killed in an Israeli air strike in Tubas, located in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent on Wednesday.

The organisation's teams retrieved the bodies from the scene and transferred them to a nearby hospital.

The Israeli army confirmed the attack, stating that an IAF aircraft targeted an armed terrorist cell in the area as part of ongoing counter-terrorism efforts.

Earlier, an Israeli strike on September 10 in eastern Lebanon killed a Hezbollah commander, a source close to the group and the Israeli military said, with the Iran-backed movement saying it launched rockets in retaliation.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack triggered war in Gaza, with repeated escalations during more than 11 months of the cross-border violence.

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, "a field commander" in the group's elite Radwan Force, "was targeted in an Israeli strike on a motorcycle in the Bekaa" Valley in Lebanon's east, far from the Israeli border.

Violence in the occupied West Bank was already on the rise before Israel's assault on Gaza, which followed an October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. 

It has escalated since, with stepped-up Israeli military raids, settler violence and Palestinian street attacks.

Tension has escalated across the West Bank amid Israel’s brutal offensive on Gaza, which has killed more than 41,100, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack on October 7 last year.

At least 694 Palestinians have since been killed and over 5,700 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian figures.

Palestinians have long aimed to establish an independent state in the territories Israel occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Most countries deem settlements, built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as illegal. Israel disregards the international community's views and UN resolutions with impunity mostly due to complicity of Western powers.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have regularly complained of the growing violence and strength of settler incursions in Palestinian areas like Huwara or Burqa, which have seen repeated attacks and there was a feeling of shock in the village.

In a report from January, Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group that monitors settler violence, said an analysis of 1,664 investigation files between 2005-23 showed almost 94% were closed without an indictment.

But as global pressure has mounted on Israel over the Gaza war, the patience of Israel's allies, including the United States, has been increasingly strained by incidents which cause deep anger in their home countries.

Many, including the United States have begun imposing sanctions on individuals and face pressure to do more and to curb the expansion of settlements on land the Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state, a key part of the two-state solution favoured by Western countries.