NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man during clashes in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, the latest in a series of near-daily confrontations.
At least six other Palestinians, including two journalists, were wounded by Israeli fire, medics at the scene said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, a national holiday in Israel.
The clashes began when Israeli forces surrounded the house of Salman Imran, who the Islamist militant group Hamas claimed as a member, in the town of Deir al-Hatab east of Nablus.
In an audio message circulating on social media, Imran said he was engaged in a gun fight with Israeli soldiers and called on other men to join.
Witnesses said dozens of Palestinian gunmen fired at Israeli forces in an attempt to foil their operation.
Videos on social media seemed to show Imran being escorted outside his house by Israeli soldiers.
“These clashes are part of an escalation in our resistance in the West Bank and is our people’s response to what is happening in the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told Reuters.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said the man who was killed, 21-year-old Alaa Zaghal, was shot in the head. Palestinian medics said he was unarmed when Israeli forces fired at him near the town’s entrance, away from where the clashes were taking place.
The Israeli military has intensified its raids in the West Bank in recent months following a spate of Palestinian street attacks that killed 19 people in Israel and as a general election approaches on Nov. 1.
More than 80 Palestinians, including gunmen and civilians, have been killed since January, in what the European Commission described as the deadliest year in the West Bank since 2008.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in a 1967 Middle East War. Palestinians seek these territories for a future state.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Nablus and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Additional reporting and writing by Henriette Chacar; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
