At least 10 Palestinians killed in Israeli raid in West Bank

An Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank killed at least 10 Palestinians and wounded dozens more. Local health officials say a 72-year-old man and a teenage boy are among the dead. This attack took place just before noon in what is a rare daytime operation. A building was destroyed in that raid and some shops were caught in the crossfire. You can see the aftermath or some of the conflict there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government is pushing for a tougher stance against Islamic extremists in the region. Yolande Nel joins us now from Jerusalem.

She's a Middle East correspondent for the BBC and is watching all of this unfold. Yolande, what more can you tell us about how this raid was conducted? Well, this was a large Israeli military raid in the middle of the morning at a time when the streets of the old city in Nablus would have been busy. I've been there many times. It's quite a sort of marketplace, really. You can see a lot of videos being widely shared on social media. They show there was heavy gunfighting that broke out after the Israeli forces entered. There were explosions also.

You see Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli troop carriers. There were Israeli soldiers there with dogs as well. Some people who are evidently unarmed on the street also caught up as these gun battles were going on. The Israeli army said that it went into the old city to act on information that it had. It seems that it had real-time information on the location of a wanted militant. And that it went after three wanted men. It says it surrounded an apartment which was being used by them as a hideout.

And that was really the focus of their raid. And you can see that that building was almost demolished from some of the pictures. Usually these raids take place at night. And as you say, the Israeli army said that the reason that they moved in right now was because of this rare opportunity. Does this pretend potentially more of these daytime raids, which as you note have the potential for more civilian casualties? I mean, that's definitely a possibility. We have seen a real increase over the past year in the search, arrest and intelligence gathering operations by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank since there was a series of deadly Palestinian attacks. And in this case, they say that they went in because they went after these three men.

All of them, they say, were known militants and that they had been involved in an attack which killed an Israeli soldier last October in other shooting attacks on Israeli forces. And the Israeli military say that they were planning further attacks. But you can see that this really does have the potential to raise tensions a lot. Just last month, we also had another deadly raid in Jeneen refugee camp. But I went along to 10 people were also killed there. And we were told at the time that was the most deadly raid of its kind since 2005. So it's the time of the Palestinian interfather.

And there were also a couple of civilians that were killed in that raid. It seems that while one of the local militant groups is saying that six of the people killed today were armed fighters, that there were several civilians who were killed as well. This is all coming at a really sensitive time as we head into a holiday period when the Islamic holy month of Ramadan is going to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Passover. Already, there have been so many concerns expressed internationally, of course, a lot from the Americans saying that tensions must be lowered in this period. But in fact, what we're seeing at the moment is the opposite. To your point, Yolande, US Secretary of State Blinken was in the region recently making that very point that the temperature needs to come down. Considering this is happening, is the expectation there will be more violence in the days and weeks ahead? I mean, definitely when you speak to Israeli security forces, they say that they are now preparing for retaliation.

We know that the Israeli police have been put on a higher level of alert. They have increased their numbers across the country. We said we know also that there is concern about the possibility of revenge attacks from militants based in Gaza. And there have been threats that have been made from the military wing of Hamas, which governs Gaza, saying the resistance forces there, in their words, are monitoring the crimes of the enemy and their patience is running out. So this all sounds rather ominous. And we remember, of course, as well, that after that last deadly raid in Jaleen last month, which I mentioned, there was then a Palestinian attack the very next day, are the most deadly since 2008, which killed seven Israelis outside a synagogue in a settlement in East Jerusalem. Eye-opening stuff for sure.

We'll stay in contact with you, Yolande Nel, with our partners at BBC. Thank you very much.

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