More than 450 families have been forcibly displaced in the Hebron governorate in the occupied West Bank as an Israeli military siege entered its fourth consecutive day on Monday 26 October, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

WAFA reported that Israeli troops searched 500 Palestinian homes and detained 70 people on Monday, and that the military deployed armoured vehicles and established more than 240 checkpoints and gates across the governorate. Hebron Governor Khaled Dudin told WAFA the displacement affected more than 2,300 people from the Deir Bahha and al-Jalda areas, while the Support and Relief Committee in Hebron put the city's total displaced residents at about 2,649.

According to WAFA's account, the operation includes 120 military checkpoints and 128 closed gates, and Israeli forces partitioned a street in the Jabal al-Rahma area to separate Palestinian residents from Israeli settlers. The Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission reported 272 attacks and 19 demolition operations involving 91 structures in the governorate during September, as cited by WAFA.

The operation follows a shooting near Hebron on Friday that killed two Israeli soldiers, after which Israeli operations in the area intensified, according to a separate world roundup of the weekend. That roundup put the number displaced in the Hebron vicinity at more than 2,600 and said outside access to the city had been closed off, with at least 15 towns raided across the northern West Bank.

No independent verification of the WAFA displacement figures from the Israeli military was included in the reports found. The figures in this brief are therefore attributed to WAFA and local officials, not presented as independently confirmed totals.

Source: WAFA via Pakistan TV