Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank continued to rage Sunday while its troops found the bodies of six captives in the Gaza Strip.
Tel Aviv's forces and Palestinian resistance groups engaged in clashes in the West Bank, five days into the largest coordinated Israeli raids in years.
An alleged shooting attack near the Tarqumiya checkpoint in the Hebron area in the southern West Bank killed three people Sunday, said Israel's emergency medical service. The police force later said they were all officers.
In the northern West Bank, an AFP photographer saw Israeli bulldozers in Jenin's city center, a day after a local official said soldiers had destroyed most of the streets while power and water had been cut off in the adjacent Jenin refugee camp.
At least 22 Palestinians, including 14 claimed by resistance groups, have been killed by the Israeli military since Wednesday in simultaneous raids in several cities across the northern West Bank.
Israel's military said a 20-year-old soldier was killed Saturday.
Britain, France and Spain have all expressed concerns about Israel's West Bank operation.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that "Israel alone is responsible for the dangerous escalation," urging an end to "its bloody aggression on the occupied West Bank."
The United Nations said Wednesday that at least 637 Palestinians had been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war began.
At least 23 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during army operations over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
A military statement said the remains of six hostages were recovered Saturday "from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area" in southern Gaza and formally identified in Israel.
The were named as Carmel Gat, who was taken from a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino and Alexander Lobanov – a dual Russian-Israeli national – who were seized by Palestinian resistance members from the site of a rave party, confirmed military spokesperson Daniel Hagari.
U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration has provided unconditional support to Israel while also being involved in mediation efforts for a truce and hostage release deal, said he was "still optimistic" that a deal can be reached.
"It's time this war ended," Biden told reporters and in a statement said he was "devastated and outraged" by the deaths of the six hostages, including U.S.-Israeli Goldberg-Polin.
The six were among 251 hostages seized during the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion that triggered the ongoing conflict, 97 of whom remain captive in Gaza including 33 the Israeli army says are dead. Scores were released during a negotiated one-week truce in November.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said a negotiated "deal for the return of the hostages" was urgently needed.
"Were it not for the delays, sabotage and excuses" in months of mediation efforts, the six hostages "would likely still be alive."
Critics in Israel have accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war for political gain.
Senior Hamas official Izzat Rishq, without elaborating on the circumstances of the six hostages' death, blamed the Israeli "occupation ... which continues its genocidal war" and "runs away from a cease-fire deal."
Netanyahu said Hamas leaders were the ones "who kill hostages and do not want an agreement," vowing to "settle the score" with them.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate in upcoming elections to replace Biden, blamed Hamas for Goldberg-Polin's death.
Harris in a statement said the Palestinian group has "American blood on its hands," and that the "threat it poses to the people of Israel ... must be eliminated."
The Oct. 7 incursion resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel's geocidal war on Gaza, in comparison, has killed at least 40,691 people, according to the territory's Health Ministry. The U.N. rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
The fighting has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of its 2.4 million people and triggered a humanitarian crisis. Water, sanitation and medical facilities have been ravaged, contributing to the spread of preventable disease.
