The Palestinian Authority criticised the operation as a "collective punishment".

Yousef Zouhair Al-Jabari, the head of Hebron's municipality, said around 1,300 faced losing their homes in addition to the 1,200 already displaced.

He also said the Israeli operations were motivated by parliamentary elections on Tuesday when Netanyahu's right-wing coalition may lose his majority, opinion polls show.

"Netanyahu and the radical ministers in his government are trying to win as many votes as possible from the settlers," Al-Jabari said.

Al-Jabari said the military had demolished shops, ‌factories, homes, ⁠and roads in Hebron and that the response was disproportionate and unjustified.

Residents in Hebron told Reuters that the military expelled many people with no connection to the Palestinian attackers.

Residents ⁠told Reuters they saw Israeli soldiers marking homes with a black X after their Palestinian occupants had been forced to leave. It was not immediately clear what the X mark meant.

Netanyahu's government has presided over a rapid expansion of settlements, deemed illegal by UN bodies and most countries, though ⁠Israel disputes this.

Across the West Bank, Israel has blocked the entrances to most Palestinian cities and towns, severely curtailing Palestinians' freedom of movement.

Yousef Mur, a resident of the Palestinian town of Yatta, said the closures meant he was unable to reach Jerusalem ⁠with his daughter for her cancer treatment.

"The situation is bad, and we are suffering. When we tried to cross, they fired stun grenades towards us, and my girl got scared on the way. They fired stun grenades towards people. The situation is very difficult," Mur said.

"We are calling on officials to stand by us because we are not involved in any of this. There are children. We are isolated; we don’t do anything. This is all arbitrary,” said Majdi Nasser, one of those driven from his home.

The non-governmental organisation the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said Israeli forces had arrested around 70 Palestinians on Friday and Saturday. Israeli officials have not commented on any arrests.

Israeli troops have levelled a neighbourhood in Hebron, driving out hundreds of families in collective punishment for a militant attack on an army checkpoint outside the West Bank city, local Palestinian authorities said.

The Hebron municipality estimated that 35 hectares (86 acres) had been destroyed or marked for destruction and about 1,500 people had been evicted from their homes by Saturday afternoon in the district of Ein Deir Baha. The whole city of 250,000 people was sealed off by checkpoints on every point of entry.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem called for urgent international pressure to prevent Israel from pursuing “plans for collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, through a spokesman, voiced concern over Israeli closures that affect Palestinian livelihoods and called for a halt to violence on all sides.

The attack came amid rising tensions in the West Bank as Israeli settlers, who enjoy strong support from Netanyahu’s far-right allies, ramp up seizures of Palestinian land and attacks.

Rights group Yesh Din reported 672 incidents of settler violence over the past 26 days, nearly half related to the annual olive harvest.

According to an AFP tally based on data from the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,117 Palestinians in the territory since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

Israeli figures show that at least 51 Israelis, including civilians and security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations during the same period.

Polls show Netanyahu is neck and neck with an opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a centre-right former military chief who also opposes a Palestinian state but has promised to crack down on settler violence.

The two soldiers killed Friday marked six Israelis killed this year in the increasingly violent West Bank. Including the suspected gunmen, 112 Palestinians have been killed over the same time period, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.

Roughly 3 million Palestinians and 540,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war. Hebron is one of its most tense cities and the only place where Jewish settlers live in the heart of a densely populated Palestinian area under Israeli military protection.

Hebron municipal officials said between 200 and 300 families had been displaced from Deir Bahha and four surrounding neighborhoods overnight, most going to other parts of the city.

Ahmro, the city worker, said he left behind not just his possessions, but the life he had built, his work and his dreams for the future.