RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed at least two Palestinians on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, in clashes that erupted during a raid in the occupied West Bank that followed deadly Arab attacks in Israel.
The Israeli military said its forces and border police entered the refugee camp in the city of Jenin to “apprehend terrorist suspects”.
“During the operation, terrorists opened fire at our forces. Israeli troops returned fire that struck the gunmen. An Israeli soldier was slightly wounded,” the military said in a statement.
The Palestinian health ministry said two Palestinians, aged 17 and 23, were killed in the clashes.
In a suspected Palestinian attack on Thursday, an Israeli man was stabbed in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank, Israel’s national ambulance service said. It said he suffered moderate wounds.
On Tuesday, a Palestinian gunman from the Jenin area killed five people in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak before he was shot dead by police. The incident raised the death toll from Arab attacks in Israel over the past week to 11.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke late on Wednesday with U.S. President Joe Biden, who the U.S. Embassy said “expressed his deepest condolences following the horrific terrorist attacks”.
Bennett has announced a series of measures to counter what he has described as a new wave of attacks, saying more police would be put on the streets and security in areas bordering the West Bank would be beefed up.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Writing by Jeffrey Heller)
