By Ali Sawafta
TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) - The ruins of a coffee shop in the West Bank city of Tulkarm show the force of the airstrike on Thursday night that killed a senior local commander of the militant group Hamas - and at least 17 others.
The strike in Tulkarm's Noor Shams refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the occupied West Bank, destroyed the ground floor shop entirely, leaving rescue workers picking through piles of concrete rubble with the smell of blood still hanging in the air.
Two holes in an upper level show where the missile penetrated the three-storey building before reaching the coffee shop, where a mechanical digger was clearing rubble.
The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago, and one of the biggest since the second "intifada" uprising two decades ago.
"We haven't heard this sound since 2002," said Nimer Fayyad, owner of the cafe, whose brother was killed in the strike.
"The missiles targeted a civilian building, a family was wiped from the civil registry. What was their fault? ...
"There is no safe place for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves."
Residents said the strike took place after a rally in the middle of the camp by armed fighters based there. When the rally ended, some went to the coffee shop.
The Israeli military said the strike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, a volatile city in the northern West Bank that has seen repeated clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.
It said the attack joined "a number of significant counterterrorism activities" conducted in the area since the start of the war.
ATTACK KILLS FAMILY OF FIVE IN APARTMENT
Local residents said another commander, from the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, was also killed but there was no immediate confirmation from either faction.
But Palestinian emergency services said at least 18 people had died in all, including a family of five in an apartment in the same building.
The missiles penetrated their ceiling and the floor of their kitchen, leaving many of the cabinets incongruously intact.
With the first anniversary approaching of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the strike on Tulkarm underlined how widely the war has now spread.
As well as fighting in Gaza, now largely reduced to rubble, Israeli troops are engaged in southern Lebanon while parts of the West Bank, which has seen repeated arrest sweeps and raids, have in recent weeks come to resemble a full-blown war zone.
Flashpoint cities in the northern West Bank like Tulkarm and Jenin have suffered repeated large-scale operations against Palestinian militant groups that are deeply embedded in the area's refugee camps.
"What's happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders," said Faisal Salam, head of the camp refugee council.
More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the past year, many of them armed fighters but many also unarmed youths throwing stones during protests, or civilian passers-by.
At the same time, dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the West Bank and Israel by Palestinians, most recently in Tel Aviv, where seven people were killed by two Palestinians from the West Bank with an automatic weapon.