Israeli West Bank airstrike kills 18 including Hamas commander

At least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday, with the Israeli military saying it killed a Hamas commander.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force had killed the head of Hamas' network in Tulkarm in a strike. It identified him as Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.

The Palestinian government "calls for urgent international action to stop the escalating massacres" against its people, it said in a statement.

The official spokesman for the Palestinian presidency also condemned the attack, the Palestinian news agency WAFA said, adding that those attacks "will not bring security and stability to anyone, but will drag the region into more violence".

Violence has surged in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, with almost daily sweeps by Israeli forces that have involved thousands of arrests and regular gunbattles between security forces and Palestinian fighters.