An Israeli air strike overnight in Tulkarem killed a 15-year-old Palestinian, said a hospital source in the city.

In total, "there are 30 martyrs and about 130 wounded in the West Bank since Wednesday," when the Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.

The toll includes three deaths in the Hebron area in the southern West Bank, in incidents unrelated to the raids in the north.

On the seventh day of Israel's major "counter-terrorism" operation in the northern West Bank, the focus remained in the Jenin area, where according to the Palestinian health ministry at least 18 have been killed since Wednesday.

In a separate incident, a 16-year-old girl was killed by the Israeli army in the town of Kfar Dan, in the Jenin governorate, the health ministry said Tuesday, without specifying whether she was part of the 18 killed in the area.

An AFP correspondent said the streets were empty and shops were closed in Jenin on Tuesday, with Israeli armoured vehicles and army bulldozers as well as ambulances among the few vehicles on the roads.

The correspondent said paved streets had been overturned by Israeli bulldozers in several areas, which the army says is a way to detonate explosive devices hidden under roads.

One man, holding a Palestinian flag, was standing defiantly in front of the bulldozers.

The Jenin city council said that 70 percent of roads and streets have been destroyed since the start of the raid.

Bashir Matahen, a municipality spokesman, said about 20 kilometres of water, sewage, communication and electricity lines were destroyed, including 80 percent of the city's water pipes.

The municipality lacked the funds to carry out all the necessary repairs, he told AFP.

Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp, where army bulldozers also destroyed infrastructure.

The military carries out regular incursions into Palestinian population centres, but such operations are rarely conducted simultaneously as in the northern West Bank in recent days.

Surging violence 
 

A medical source at the Tulkarem government hospital told AFP on Tuesday that a 15-year-old teenager was killed in the strike that also wounded his father and four others.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams handled several shrapnel injuries in Tulkarem, including one of its paramedics.

Further south, Israeli forces entered the Birzeit University campus near Ramallah before dawn on Tuesday, confiscating property from the student council, the institution said in a statement.

Violence in the Palestinian territory has surged since the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip triggered on October 7, which is separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory.

Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 637 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry and UN figures from last week.

At least 23 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in the attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.

* This story was edited by Ahram Online.