Death toll in Israeli raid in West Bank reaches 20

The death toll from a three-day Israeli assault on the occupied West Bank rose to 20 on Friday, Israel and the Palestinian Health Ministry said, as violence continued to rage in the Gaza Strip.

The US-based aid organization Anera had previously said that four Palestinians accompanying their convoy were killed in an Israeli attack on Thursday.

The United Nations World Food Programme said on Wednesday it had suspended its aid efforts after one of its vehicles was hit in an Israeli attack.

In the US, Vice President Kamala Harris promised that she would not change Washington's policy of supplying arms to Israel if she were elected in November. However, she stressed that it was time to “end this war” in Gaza.

Israeli troops withdrew from other West Bank towns late Thursday, but fighting around Jenin continued.

An AFP photographer reported on Friday evening that gunfire and explosions continued in Jenin.

In Gaza, Israeli artillery shelled western areas of Gaza city early Friday, an AFP journalist reported. A medical source at the southern Nasser Hospital said an Israeli attack killed three people near the southern city of Khan Younis.

The World Health Organization said Israel had agreed to a “humanitarian pause” of at least three days in parts of the Gaza Strip starting Sunday to allow for a vaccination campaign after the first case of polio in a quarter of a century was recorded in the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the measures were “not a ceasefire.”

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

According to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, at least 45 people have been arrested in the West Bank since Wednesday.

Britain on Friday expressed its “deep” concern about the attacks and called on Israel to “exercise restraint” and abide by international law.

France said the Israeli operations “are worsening a climate of unprecedented instability and violence,” while Spain condemned “an outbreak of violence that is clearly unacceptable.”

Two people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip on Friday, the civil defense of the Hamas-ruled area said.

The acting head of the United Nations Humanitarian Office (OCHA), Joyce Msuya, said that “more than 88 percent of the Gaza Strip has been subject to an (Israeli) evacuation order at some point,” adding that civilians have only been forced out of 11 percent of the Gaza Strip.

“It forces us to ask: what has happened to our basic sense of humanity?” OCHA said on Friday that “the number of humanitarian missions and movements inside the Gaza Strip denied access by the Israeli authorities almost doubled in August compared to July.”

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 40,602 people have been killed by Israel's military campaign. The UN Office for Human Rights says most of the dead are women and children.

The war has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of the country's 2.4 million inhabitants and triggered a humanitarian crisis.