The Battle for Jenin

Buildings and homes have been reduced to rubble in the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp, the site of a bloody Israeli-Palestinian battle.

Buildings and homes have been reduced to rubble in the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, the site of a bloody Israeli-Palestinian battle.  (CAROLYN COLE / LAT)

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Scenes from the refugee camp where Israeli soldiers and Palestinians waged one of the bloodiest fights of the current Mideast crisis.

Urban Battlefield

Two men dash across an alley in the Jenin refugee camp, which bears the scars of an Israeli assault. The camp’s maze of narrow passages challenged Israeli troops untrained in urban warfare.  (CAROLYN COLE / LAT)

Mourning Loved One

A Palestinian woman weeps for a relative, whose body was one of those dug up from a hospital mass grave and reinterred in a cemetery.  (CAROLYN COLE / LAT)

The Smell of Death

Pealestinian residents of the Jenin camp are assailed by the stench of rotting bodies beneath rubble, which in some areas is piled 6 feet deep.  (CAROLYN COLE / LAT)

Lookout

Majida Ahmed Damaj, 23, watches Israeli tanks from her home in Jenin camp. Her family, and many others, did not leave the camp throughout the fighting. Israeli intelligence had told soldiers that few civilians remained.  (CAROLYN COLE / LAT)

Funeral

Fellow mourners support Lilach Yoel at the funeral of her husband, Lt. Eyal Yoel. His death in an ambush along with 12 other Israeli soldiers changed the army’s approach to fighting in Jenin, from foot patrols and house-to-house searches to large-sale, unforgiving demolition of buildings.  (BRYAN CHAN / LAT)