THE Israelis wiped out a family of four, including two young children, in an air strike on a cafe in the occupied West Bank today.

The strike slammed into a three-storey building in the Tulkarem refugee camp late on Thursday, setting it on fire, destroying a popular cafe and killing at least 18 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. 

It was the deadliest strike in the West Bank since Israel’s invasion of Gaza nearly a year ago.

Paramedics searched the rubble inside the blasted-out coffee shop, gathering human remains into small boxes. Young boys and men walked among the ruins of the shop, digging past bloodstained furniture and dislodged iron beams for anything to salvage.

Among the dead was the Abu Zahra family: Muhammad, a bakery worker, his wife Saja and their two children Sham, eight, and Karam, six, according to the man’s brother, Mustafa Abu Zahra, who said the family lived above the coffee shop. 

He said that one of Muhammad’s brothers-in-law was also in the flat at the time and was killed.

Israel claimed that the strike killed several Hamas fighters, including the group’s leader in the camp, who is accused of planning and taking part in multiple attacks against Israeli civilians. 

Hamas did not immediately claim any of the dead as its fighters, but condemned the strike and called for Palestinians in Tulkarem to rise up.

Israel has carried out several large-scale raids in the West Bank since it began its war on the Palestinians in Gaza following the attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.

Palestinian officials say at least 722 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israel since that time.

Nimer Fayat, the owner of Dr Coffee, said the cafe was full with “regular customers coming to eat and drink” when the strike occurred at 10.15pm.

“What happened was a very strong blow, the likes of which we had not seen in the past since the al-Aqsa Intifada,” he said, using a Palestinian term for the second intifada in the early 2000s.

A full list of the casualties was not immediately released by the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Yasser Jibra, another relative of the Abu Zahras, said: “This is the work of the criminal occupation, which does not take into account the presence of a child or a woman, or an elderly or young person.

“Everything is permissible for them.”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on civilian deaths in the strike.