Ramallah (Reuters) – Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian militant during clashes that followed a military arrest raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Islamic Jihad armed group said.
The Israeli military said its forces came under fire from suspects who threw explosives at soldiers in the confrontations near the flashpoint city of Jenin and that the soldiers “responded with live fire and identified a hit.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death of a 17-year-old there. Islamic Jihad said he was a member of the group and gave his age as 18.
In the Palestinian city Hebron, Israeli security forces arrested two Palestinians who they said had carried out a drive-by shooting that killed an Israeli woman on Monday while a search for another gunman who killed two Israelis in the village Huwara further north on Saturday was still going on.
The military said it arrested a total of 32 Palestinian suspects overnight between Monday and Tuesday.
Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months with frequent Israeli raids, Palestinian street attacks and retribution assaults by Jewish settlers.
Prospects of reviving U.S.-brokered peace talks that aimed to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, remain dim almost a decade after their collapse.
Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and has since built dozens of settlements there that are considered illegal by most countries, a view Israel disputes, with its military in control of more than half the territory.
The Palestinians have limited self-rule in the West Bank and remain split between a Western-backed administration and armed Hamas Islamists who reject coexistence with Israel, while many in Israel’s current government reject Palestinian statehood.
