GENEVA: Israel’s large-scale military operation Wednesday in the occupied West Bank “risks seriously deepening the already catastrophic situation” in the Palestinian territory, the United Nations said.

The Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids across four cities — Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem — with the army saying it killed nine Palestinian fighters.

Israel’s operations in the cities “and the killing of at least nine Palestinians, two of them reportedly children, take the overall death toll in the West Bank since October 7 to 637,” UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement.

“This represents the highest number of fatalities over a period of eight months since the UN first started recording casualties in the West Bank two decades ago.”