AT LEAST nine Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces launched the biggest attack on the occupied West Bank in decades today.

The attack, which involved hundreds of ground troops supported by fighter planes and drones, targeted Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that Israeli forces killed four people in the Far’a refugee camp in Tubas.

The Red Crescent said its teams were having trouble reaching the injured because Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from entering the area.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said two people were killed in Jenin, while three others were slain when an Israeli drone struck their vehicle in the nearby village of Seir.

Palestinians in the West Bank fear the Israeli attacks are intended to broaden the war.

Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said that “large forces” had entered Jenin, Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

He claimed that the nine killed were all combatants, including three killed in an air strike in Tulkarem and another four in an air strike in Al-Faraa. 

He said another five suspected militants were arrested, and that the raids were the first stage of an even larger operation aimed at preventing attacks on Israelis.

The number of raids on the West Bank has massively increased since Israel’s invasion of Gaza last October.

Reporter Nida Ibrahim told Al Jazeera: “In the past few weeks, we’ve seen an intensification in the use of aerial strikes against Palestine fighters.”

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the raids as a “serious escalation” and called on the United States to intervene. 

President Abbas later announced that he was cutting a visit to Saudi Arabia short and returning to the West Bank, where his administration is based.

At least 652 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since the war in Gaza began over 10 months ago, according to the Palestinian ministry. 

Most have died during such raids, which often trigger gun battles with militants.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, described the Israeli operation as “an act of war.”

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz posted on the X social media site: “We must deal with the threat in the West Bank as we are doing in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever other steps are required. This is a war for everything and we must win it.”