Israeli airstrike in northern West Bank kills 5, who army says were planning attack

An Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in the occupied West Bank killed five Palestinians, according to Israel's army and Palestinian media, as violence flares in the Israeli-occupied territory.

The Israeli army said its forces struck a vehicle carrying five militants in a rural area northwest of the city of Tulkarem in the northwest West Bank early Saturday morning, as the occupants were on their way to carry out an attack.

According to an Associated Press journalist and witnesses, the blast took place along a road connecting the Palestinian villages of Zeita and Qaffin.

“I was going to work in the morning and I heard an explosion here next to the house,” said Taiser Abdullah, a Zeita resident.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the five slain Palestinians were taken to a nearby hospital, and that four of the bodies were “burned and charred beyond recognition.” The Palestinian health ministry has not commented on the deaths.

Over 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza last October according to the Palestinians Health Ministry, which tracks the deaths. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests, but the dead also include bystanders and Palestinians killed in attacks by Jewish settlers.

The northern West Bank has seen some of the territory's worst violence over the past 10 months. Tulkarem, and its two refugee camps, has become one of the territory's main flashpoints, and is regularly raided by Israeli forces. Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are active in the city.

The strike came just days after the consecutive assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran early