Israeli troops have shot dead two Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank during an army raid near a flashpoint town.
The two men – Ezzedine Bassem Hamamreh, 24, and Amjad Adnan Khaliliyeh, 23 – were killed on Saturday “during an assault on the village of Jaba, south of Jenin”, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group said Hamamreh and Khaliliyeh were its members. In a statement, the group condemned the killings, describing the two men as “heroic martyrs”.
It said they were killed while trying to intervene against the “occupation forces, which were carrying out a cowardly assassination operation”.
A third Palestinian, 19-year-old Yazen Samer Ja’abari, died of injuries he received when he was shot by Israeli forces on January 2, the ministry added. Ja’abari was wounded in the village of Kufr Dan near Jenin during an army raid, in which two other Palestinians were killed.
The latest deaths bring to 12 the number of Palestinians killed this year by Israeli forces in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967. The number includes three minors. The Israeli military has been engaged in a campaign of intensified raids and killings that has lasted almost a year.
Since a string of attacks carried out by Palestinians in Israel that began in March, the Israeli army has launched a campaign called Break the Wave, which has included near-daily raids, mass arrests and killings in the occupied West Bank with a focus on Jenin and Nablus, where Palestinian armed resistance has grown more organised over the past year.