Israel launched the most intense airstrikes on the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades on Monday, saying it was trying to root out armed militants in the city of Jenin after a year of escalating violence there. At least eight Palestinians were killed.

The Israeli military said the operation began shortly after 1am (local time) with drone attacks from the air on what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in the Jenin area, followed by hundreds of ground forces moving in. Military officials said the operation focused on militant targets in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp, an area of less than a quarter of a square mile abutting the city, with about 17,000 residents.

Israel estimates that there are hundreds of armed Palestinian militants in the Jenin area, which has recently been the focus of attacks against Israelis and deadly Israeli Army arrest raids.

Long a symbol of Palestinian militancy and a haven for armed groups opposing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Jenin is a stronghold of the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group and of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Israeli military officials say more than 50 shooting attacks have been carried out from the Jenin area against Israeli targets in the past six months.

Army arrest raids have led to increasingly fierce exchanges of fire between the troops and the militants, prompting Monday’s incursion.

“The camp is a war zone in the full meaning of the word,” Muhammad Sbaghi, a member of the local committee that helps administer the Jenin camp, said after the operation began on Monday. He added that residents had feared a large-scale incursion by the Israeli military but had not expected something so violent and destructive.

“The occupation army is vindictively targeting us,” he said. “People are terrified,” he added, saying that residents were holed up in their homes throughout the Jenin refugee camp.

A spokesman for the Israeli military, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said the goal of the Israeli operation was “to break the safe-haven mindset” of the refugee camp. At least 19 people suspected of attacks on Israelis had found shelter there in recent months, according to the military.

Colonel Hecht said the airstrikes were intended to “minimise friction” on the ground and the risk to Israeli troops, adding that the assault would go on for “as long as needed”. Ground forces inside the camp were seizing weapons, he said.

Israeli media reports estimated that about 1,000 ground troops were in Jenin as part of the operation.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed that at least eight Palestinians had been killed in Jenin and about 50 were wounded, 10 of them gravely. Israel said it had killed at least seven. The military described Jenin as “an active combat area”.

New York Times News Service