RAMALLAH, Palestine / ANKARA

The Israeli army killed five Palestinians in the West Bank on Thursday amid escalating tensions in the occupied territory, said security sources.

The deaths occurred as Israeli forces besieged and opened fire on a house in the town of Tammun, south of Tubas in northwestern West Bank, the sources told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Israeli forces seized the bodies of the Palestinians, the sources said.

The Israeli army also shut several roads in the central West Bank, hindering the movement of Palestinians.

They closed the northern entrance of Ramallah, causing traffic jams and forcing people to wait in their vehicles for long hours.

The army also closed other roads between Ramallah and its surrounding towns and villages amid Israeli military restrictions.

“I have been stuck in my car since dawn to be allowed to move,” Ibrahim Azzam, a Palestinian resident, told Anadolu.

“These Israeli restrictions only aim to toughen our daily life and force our people to emigrate,” he added.

The restrictions followed a shooting attack late Wednesday that targeted a vehicle in the northern West Bank and left one Israeli settler dead.

Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs vowed to target more Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank.

His threat came after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the decimation of Palestinian villages near the site of the shooting attack.

"Just as we flattened Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, we must flatten the nests of terror in Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich said on X, using the biblical name of the West Bank.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, demolished a Palestinian home in the town of Majdal Bani Fadil near Nablus city in the northern West Bank, citing the lack of a building permit, witnesses said.

Israel widely uses the pretext of a lack of construction permits to demolish Palestinian homes, especially in Area C in the occupied West Bank, which is under Israel’s administrative and security control and constitutes around 60% of the West Bank.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was divided into three portions – Area A, B and C.

At least 967 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to Palestinian figures.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal and demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.