Inside Israel's deadly Jenin raid, 40 hours in May that shook the West Bank refugee camp

LONDON -- Journalist Amr Manasra says he remembers the moment an iron column saved his life.

It was a miracle, he said, when an Israeli sniper’s bullet was met by the iron before it could reach his press vest -- as he lay down in the streets of Jenin in the occupied West Bank -- where he was documenting the latest raid by the Israeli forces with a few other colleagues.

In that 40-hour operation in late May, at least 11 people were killed and over 30 people were injured, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health.

Although locals interviewed by ABC News said they are used to the presence of Israeli forces in Jenin, they said they are still living through the consequences of that one operation, the full scope of the damage coming to light only now as witnesses speak up. The trail of destruction of infrastructure and resources left by that Israeli operation fits into what the U.N. has said is an increasing pattern of violence against Palestinians and their communities in the occupied territories.

ABC News has pieced together a wider accounting of the destruction that Jenin sustained in this raid and subsequently by talking to more than a dozen witnesses, including journalists on the ground, international organizations operating in Jenin, residents, and local authorities, and by obtaining and verifying visual evidence from the scene.

They said that this raid was the first of this kind in Jenin since Oct. 7, when in a surprise attack, Hamas and other militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250. Almost immediately, Israel began its war on Hamas in Gaza, which has left over 39,890 Palestinians killed in the Strip and 92,200 injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Early on May 21, Israeli troops moved deep into the Jenin refugee camp for what they called a counter-terrorism operation.

The troops opened fire on civilians, according to witnesses including paramedics on the scene, killing bystanders. Among them, three children, a prominent doctor, and a teacher.

Other witnesses interviewed by ABC News said the Israeli troops then proceeded to demolish homes, raid public buildings and dig up water pipes and roads with armored bulldozers, providing photo and video evidence that ABC News was able to geolocate to places in Jenin.

"IDF forces, the Shin Bet and Magav (Border Police) completed an operation to counter terrorism in Jenin this morning. As part of the operation, about 20 terrorist infrastructures were destroyed, including an explosives laboratory and dozens of weapons,” the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement to ABC News on May 23, the same day they left Jenin. Hamas later claimed two male adults among the victims, as confirmed by sources to ABC News.

Those 40 hours were the deadliest for Jenin since Oct. 7, and one of the most violent in the recent history of the refugee camp, according to the local United Nations office.

Located less than 20 miles south of Nazareth, Jenin is home to one of the most densely populated of 19 refugee camps for Palestinians in the West Bank, with over 20,000 registered refugees, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA. It opened in 1953 to house Palestinians seeking refuge following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Its displaced residents and their descendants have maintained special refugee status, living in a kind of limbo for decades as Jenin developed into a city, its occupants holding onto hope they will one day claim what they say is their right to the disputed land.

Jenin also became a stronghold of the Palestinian armed struggle against the Israeli occupation, which includes factions of terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and an armed wing of Fatah allied under the umbrella of what is known as Jenin Brigades, making it a frequent target for Israeli raid.

Especially in the past ten months, Jenin has been raided multiple times by Israeli forces, including in January, when soldiers entered the Ibn Sina Hospital disguised as patients, in what may account for a violation of international law, several experts told ABC News.

Still, the 40-hour operation in May stood out for its impact and scale. “This was not a normal raid but a full-scale invasion," the director of UNRWA in the West Bank, Adam Bouloukos, told ABC News, calling the operation “definitely unusual.”

“They went into our buildings and destroyed everything, room by room," Bouloukos said, adding that hundreds of Israeli soldiers arrived in full equipment.

Pictures obtained by ABC News appear to show the damage inside the U.N. buildings in Jenin after that raid.

UNRWA said Israeli soldiers camped overnight in its relief and social services office, leaving behind pizza boxes with names in Hebrew, scattered documents and broken furniture.

Some hospital rooms and the outside of the building also appear damaged, with broken monitors, windows, doors, chairs, fans and medical equipment among the vandalized objects.

Other videos appeared to show military vehicles inside the city center, near the hospital and refugee camp. The videos appeared to include the sounds of heavy gunfire.

Among the first to respond, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), whose spokesperson in Jenin, Ahmed Jibril, told ABC News that the first calls for assistance started around 8 a.m. on May 21.

But as they made their way, their ambulances were prevented from reaching the wounded and searched by Israeli forces, Jibril said. Videos geolocated by ABC News show at least three ambulances being searched in three locations in Jenin that the PRCS said are from incidents on that day.

"The shooting happened all over the refugee camp and surroundings. They began obstructing the entrance of our crews to the camp to assist people or to carry them to the hospital," the PRCS spokesperson said.

"Our crews were stripped naked and interrogated together with the injured they were transporting," he added.

Another video shared by the PRCS on their X account appears to show the moment a paramedic is forced to raise his arms and abandon the patient he was assisting.

"The PRCS ambulance man gave the injured first aid and wanted to put him on the stretcher. It was around 1:30 a.m. when the Israeli forces stopped him and asked to leave the place," Jibril said of the video. "After questions and searching, the Israeli forces arrested the injured person and dismissed the ambulance."

Journalists on duty in the refugee camp said they were also searched the same day and, in at least one case, injured and almost killed, they told ABC News.

Palestinian photojournalist Amr Manasra was filmed by a colleague, Obada Tahayna, moments after he was shot by Israeli soldiers a few feet away from the entrance of the refugee camp, he said.

"There was no one in the street except journalists and the Israeli occupation army," Manasra told ABC News in June. "We were wearing our official press uniform, including body armor and a helmet."

Manasra said a small group of journalists moved towards the Jenin Governmental Hospital to document what was happening there.

"When the first two of our fellow journalists came forward, the occupation army began shooting at me and our colleague Tahaina," Manasra told ABC News. Tahaina, who filmed the scene, confirmed the sequence of events to ABC News.

The block on ambulances continued for the second day, according to the PRCS, who said the Israeli forces rejected at least 30 requests to coordinate with them in order to allow their medical staff to assist patients.

"They also arrested a paramedic from inside the Ibn Sina ambulance and opened fire on the Red Crescent ambulance," the PRCS added. The PRCS shared via text message a photo of the damaged ambulance, which ABC News could not independently verify.

With the world focused on the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, experts are warning about the parallel spike in violence in the West Bank by the Israeli forces.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said in June it has observed over 80 cases of "consistent violations of international human rights law,” including "disproportionate use of lethal force," apparently "targeted killings" and "systematic denial or delaying of medical assistance to those critically injured" in the West Bank since Oct. 7 by the Israeli military.

“As if the tragic events in Israel and then Gaza over the past eight months were not enough, the people of the occupied West Bank are also being subjected to day-after-day of unprecedented bloodshed," U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said in a statement on June 4, after the total number of killed in the West Bank surpassed 500.

It recently topped 600, with at least 623 Palestinians killed and over 5,400 injured, according to data collected by the Palestinian Health Ministry and the U.N.

While settler violence also contributes to the death toll, over 75 percent of the total fatalities since Oct. 7 have taken place during operations by Israeli forces in cities and villages, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, told ABC News.

The number, which includes militants as well as stone-throwing youth, comprises 145 children, averaging one child killed every two days in the West Bank since the war in Gaza started, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem is considered by Palestinians as the core of a future independent state along with Gaza. Last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the top UN court, ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories is unlawful and called for the immediate end of settlements, in what is considered an unprecedented condemnation of the decades-long occupation. Israel rejected the ruling, with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it “false”.

While the international community weighs in on the decision of the ICJ, raids such as the one in Jenin on May 21 risk making parts of the West Bank unlivable for Palestinians, humanitarian agents and local government said.

Jenin City Mayor, Nidal Obeidi, told ABC News that the city’s essential infrastructure has been more heavily damaged in the months following October than ever before. Obeidi underlines the lack of electricity as well as the economic loss of Jenin residents, unable to conduct their businesses. “The streets are so destroyed that people can barely walk or drive with their cars,” Obeidi said.

The destruction that happened during the two-day raid in May was further exacerbated by more operations in the months that followed, with Israeli forces relentlessly returning to Jenin for what they said was part of a wider anti-terrorism operation at least four times, on June 6, June 13, June 22 and August 5, each time for less than a day.

11 were killed as a result, some were detained and over 30 were injured with bullets and shrapnel wounds as well as by an airstrike, according to reports by the local PRCS reviewed by ABC News. The IDF said in different statements that they targeted and eliminated terrorists with these operations.

On June 22, video footage that ABC News geolocated to Jenin appeared to show an injured Palestinian man tied to the hood of an Israeli military jeep, in what human rights experts called a case of "human shielding." The Israeli military said the incident was under investigation.

With over 302 Palestinians killed in the Jenin Governorate alone since Oct.7, the city and its surroundings have the highest number of victims across the West Bank governorates, according to OCHA.

"Reports of exchanges of fire are frequent. Houses are damaged, infrastructure is destroyed, and people are left homeless. Ambulance access is delayed as people are killed and injured,” an OCHA spokesperson told ABC News. “De-escalation is a must.”

ABC News' Helena Skinner, Samy Zayara, Nasser Atta, Diaa Hamdi, Latifeh Abdellatif and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.