The buildings, home to some 100 families, are in the Nur Shams camp, a frequent site of clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces.

Israeli military bulldozers and cranes tore through the structures early Wednesday, sending thick plumes of dust into the air, an AFP journalist reported. Many residents watched from a distance.

"Being torn away from our homes, our neighbourhoods and our memories is deeply painful," said Mutaz Mahr, whose building was being demolished.

"The occupation tries by every means to wear us down and pressure us," he told AFP.

Nihaya al-Jendi, a member of Nur Shams's popular committee, said hundreds of families had been forced out of their homes even before a military operation began earlier this year.

"Today, more than 1,500 families from the camp are still unable to return," Jendi said.

"This is a major catastrophe -- a real humanitarian disaster for Palestinian refugees -- unfolding before the eyes of the world."

The military said the demolitions were part of an operation against militants.

"Following ongoing counterterrorism activity by Israeli security forces in the area of Nur Shams in northern Samaria, the commander of the Central Command, Major General Avi Bluth, ordered the demolition of several structures due to a clear and necessary operational need," the military told AFP in a statement.

"Areas in northern Samaria have become a significant centre of terrorist activity, operating from within densely populated civilian areas."

- 'Clear buffer' -

Earlier this year, the military launched an operation it said was aimed at dismantling Palestinian armed groups from camps in northern West Bank -- including Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin.

"Even a year after the beginning of IDF operations in the area, forces continue to locate ammunition, weapons, and explosive devices used by terrorist organisations, which endanger IDF soldiers and impair operational freedom of action," the military said on Wednesday.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that operations in Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin had been "effective", claiming they had reduced what he described as terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria by 80 percent.

He added in a statement that troops would remain on the ground and act as a "clear buffer between the (Israeli) population and terrorist element", with the stated aim of preventing their regrouping and thwarting attacks.

Earlier in December, AFP reported residents of the targeted buildings retrieving their belongings, with many saying they had nowhere to go.

The demolitions form part of a broader Israeli strategy aimed at easing access for military vehicles within the densely built refugee camps of the West Bank.

Israel has occupied the Palestinian territory since 1967.

Nur Shams, along with other refugee camps in the West Bank, was established after the creation of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.

With time, the camps they established inside the West Bank became dense neighbourhoods not under their adjacent cities' authority. Residents pass on their refugee status from one generation to the next.

Many residents believe Israel is seeking to destroy the idea of the camps themselves, turning them into regular neighbourhoods of the cities they flank, in order to eliminate the refugee issue.