Ramallah, West Bank - The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas denounced Israel's brutal assault on the illegally occupied West Bank as "ethnic cleansing" on Monday, with the health ministry saying Israeli forces killed 70 people in the territory this year.

In a statement, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Palestinian presidency "condemned the occupation authorities' expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing".

Later, the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said there had been "70 martyrs in the West Bank since the beginning of this year," with 10 children, one woman and two elderly people among the dead.

The ministry confirmed to AFP they were "killed by the Israeli occupation".

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The figures showed 38 people killed in Jenin and 15 in Tubas in the north of the West Bank. One was killed in East Jerusalem, illegally annexed by Israel.

The Israeli military launched a major attack on the West Bank on January 21, under the guise of rooting out resistance against its decades-long occupation and moves to permanently annex Palestinian territory.

"We demand the intervention of the US administration before it is too late, to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against our people and our land," Rudeineh told the Palestinian official news agency WAFA in a statement coinciding with a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington.

Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, is expected to begin talks on a second phase of Israel's truce with Hamas in Gaza on Monday.

The next stage is expected to cover the release of the remaining captives and include discussions on a more permanent end to Israel's war on the territory, which has been declared a genocide by numerous human rights organizations, legal experts, and scholars.