UPDATE - Israeli army kills 4 Palestinians in Nur Shams refugee camp in northern West Bank

UPDATES WITH HEADLINE, DECK, LEDE, CASUALTIES, ISRAELI ARMY WITHDRAWAL

By Ahmed Asmar

ANKARA (AA) – Four Palestinians, including a child, were killed on Thursday at dawn in an Israeli drone strike in the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem city, the northern occupied West Bank.

The Health Ministry said in a statement that there were “two martyrs in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem as a result of an (Israeli) occupation airstrike.”

Another Palestinian was killed hours earlier in a shooting incident at the Tulkarem camp, the ministry added.

Later, the ministry said, “A body arrived at Tulkarem Governmental Hospital, shot by Israeli forces in the Nur Shams refugee camp.”

Meanwhile, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the Israeli army, escorted by bulldozers, raided Tulkarem and its Nur Shams refugee camp at an early hour.

The Israeli bulldozers started to destroy the infrastructure and people's properties in the camp, it added.

The Palestinian agency reported fierce clashes and the sound of explosions in the camp while the drones were flying over the camp.

Witnesses later told Anadolu that the army withdrew from the city and its camps following Israeli soldiers' military actions, which included extensive searches and raids that caused significant infrastructure damage.

During the military actions, Israeli bulldozers destroyed many streets, water pipelines, and electricity networks, the witnesses added.

Tension has been running high across the West Bank due to Israel’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 43,100 people, mostly women and children, following a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas last October.

At least 766 Palestinians have since been killed and around 6,300 injured by Israeli army fire in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The current escalation follows a July opinion by the International Court of Justice which declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories “illegal” and called for the evacuation of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.