Clean-up begins after three-day operation, the largest attack on occupied West Bank in two decades

On the second floor of the Shibli family home in the Jenin refugee camp, three small boys knelt on the tile floor, picking up hundreds of spent bullet casings left by Israeli snipers who had used their kitchen as a firing position. The cartridges clinked and chimed gently as the children cleared up and their glum parents surveyed the extent of the damage inflicted on their property.

The 50 members of the extended family, who all live in flats in the same large building, returned to their homes on Wednesday morning after Israeli forces withdrew the night before. The three-day operation, codenamed Home and Garden, was the largest Israeli offensive in the occupied West Bank in two decades, involving airstrikes and up to 2,000 ground troops.

Twelve Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead after one of Israel’s biggest military operations in occupied West Bank in years

Israel has withdrawn its forces from the Palestinian city of Jenin after carrying out one of its biggest military operations in the occupied West Bank for years.

Local media quoted the Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari as saying all troops had left Jenin and that the operation was completed. Witnesses in Jenin reported seeing convoys of Israeli military vehicles leaving the city after dark.

Armoured incursion in response to rising bloodshed across Israel and West Bank looks political as much as tactical

In the darkness of the night, thousands of people stumbled in lines through the Jenin refugee camp, guiding each other through the twisted metal, churned-up concrete and spent ammunition littering the streets during a lull in Operation Home and Garden, Israel’s biggest offensive in the West Bank for 20 years.

Videos of the streams of people – about 3,000-4,000, according to Palestinian officials – fleeing to safety on Monday night were widely shared by Palestinians on social media, where they were likened to images of the Nakba, the expulsion of the Arab population from the newly created state of Israel in 1948.