Israeli forces fire tear gas inside hospital as raid continues

(NEW YORK) — Israeli forces fired tear gas inside of a hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday that injured 125 people as a two-day raid on the city continued, Doctors Without Borders said.

The tear gas fired inside of the hospital made the emergency room “unusable,” and the ER and the rest of the hospital were “completely filled with smoke,” after the attack, Doctors Without Borders said in a tweet.

The two-day raid on the West Bank city of Jenin has killed 11 Palestinians, including three children, and left at least 120 Palestinians injured, 20 of them in critical condition, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday. This is the largest raid in the West Bank since 2002.

3,000 refugees have been evacuated from Jenin since the Israeli operation began at 1:00 am local time on Monday, the Palestinian Red Crescent, an organization that works in the West Bank, said. The estimated population of the Jenin camp is about 18,000, according to the Red Crescent.

Doctors Without Borders is one of the humanitarian organizations providing support and medical aid to Palestinians in Jenin impacted by the raid, but the damage is making it difficult to reach people in need, the organization said.

“Military bulldozers have destroyed road leading to the refugee camp, which is impeding ambulances from reaching patients,” the organization said Monday. “All roads leading to the camp are blocked, including for ambulances.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited an outpost near the Jenin camp on Tuesday after an car rammed into a bus stop in Tel Aviv in protest of the raid, injuring six. Netanyahu doubled down on his justification for the raid, claiming Israeli forces destroyed important strongholds used by “terrorists.”

“Whoever thinks that such an attack will deter us from continuing our fight against terrorism is wrong,” Netanyahu said. “We will continue as long as necessary to stamp out terrorism.”

Most of the Jenin camp does not have access to drinking water because of damage from the raid. Initial estimates also show that most of the camp is without electricity, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson Vanessa Huguenin said Tuesday.

Health facilities have “sustained damage” from the raid and are “reviewing a list of urgently needed supplies,” Huguenin added.

Huguenin said the UN OCHA is “alarmed at the scale of the air and ground operations” taking place in Jenin.

“We continue to monitor the situation on the ground and we – together with our humanitarian partners – are mobilizing to assist. We call for access to the injured and affected people within the Jenin refugee camp,” Huguenin said.

Jordana Miller, Nasser Atta, and Emma Ogao contributed to this report.