PALESTINIAN KILLED BY ISRAELI FIRE IN WEST BANK CLASH
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The ministry said the man, who it did not immediately name, was shot in the stomach with live ammunition.
The incident took place near the Jalazone refugee camp north of Ramallah in the central West Bank.
Palestinian security forces scufled with Hamas supporters as they broke up a protest on Friday in the West Bank city of Hebron, witnesses and police said.
The protest in the southern West Bank city was planned in support of the group on the anniversary of its founding.
On social media sites, activists posted videos showing the security forces using batons against both male and female demonstrators in Hebron.
In Nablus in the northern West Bank, protesters from other factions clashed with Hamas demonstrators after they raised its lag, witnesses said.
Adnan Al Damiri, spokesman for the Palestinian police, conirmed they prevented a pro-hamas protest in Hebron, called initially to demonstrate against Israel.
“But Hamas... demonstrated against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security services in the city centre and not against the (Israeli) occupation.” The PA, led by president Mahmud Abbas and his Fatah party, cooperates closely with Israeli security, while Hamas has fought three wars with the Jewish state since 2008.
Hamas cells operate in the West Bank despite the PA and Israel seeking to arrest them.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed on Thursday and two other Israelis injured when a man opened ire at a bus stop at a settlement in the West Bank, before leeing.
Hamas has claimed two other recent shooting attacks in the West Bank but has so far not taken responsibility for Thursday’s attack.
The movement has controlled the Gaza Strip since forcing out Abbas’s forces in 2007, with the two at loggerheads since.
An Egyptian security delegation visited the West Bank’s main city of Ramallah to meet with Abbas late on Thursday to try to calm tensions.
A Palestinian shot dead two Israeli soldiers at a bus stop in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the military said, sparking army raids in the city of Ramallah during which a Palestinian was killed.
In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ‘legalise’ thousands of settlements homes considered unlawfully-built even by Israel.
The attack came hours after security forces killed two Palestinian murder suspects.
In total six people were killed in the most violent 24 hours to hit the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem in months.
The Israeli army said a Palestinian exited his car at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement in the West Bank before opening ire on soldiers and civilians.
Two soldiers were killed and at least two other people — including another soldier — were wounded, the army said, with the attacker leeing.
“We are searching for the terrorist. We will ind him,” the military said on Twitter.
Following the attack, the army raided the nearby city of Ramallah, home to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Entrances and exits to the city were sealed for a number of hours and the army entered multiple neighbourhoods, before troops withdrew to the outskirts on Thursday evening. Clashes broke out in various spots but subsided later in the evening, AFP correspondents said.
A 60-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, in what the army said was an attempted car ramming.
The bus stop shooting came only hours after Israeli forces killed two persons allegedly responsible for West Bank attacks that claimed the lives of three Israelis, including a baby.
The armed wing of Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel in Gaza since 2008, claimed the two Palestinians as its “ighters”.
One of them was Salah Barghouti, a 29-year-old accused of shooting seven Israelis on Sunday, also at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement.