2023-07-25 06:46:33
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Israel’s military shot and killed three suspected Palestinian gunmen in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday, in the latest bloody episode in one of the deadliest waves of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in years.
Israeli security forces said they opened fire on Palestinian insurgents who had shot at them from a car in the West Bank city of Nablus, the territory’s commercial capital and one of the main targets of Israeli military incursions. Shortly after the shooting, Israeli forces inspected a wrecked black Skoda surrounded by spent bullet casings in the rugged al-Tur neighborhood.
Palestinian media described the incident as an ambush after insurgents tried to attack Israeli forces near a Jewish settlement overlooking Nablus. According to the army, three M-16 rifles and other material were seized from the car.
Fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has raged in the territory, which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Palestinians want the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, to form their future independent state.
In recent months, the West Bank has witnessed a volatile mix between the rise of local Palestinian armed groups, which carry out frequent shootings at Israelis, and near-daily military raids, which are increasingly deadly. Earlier this month, the most forceful Israeli incursion into the territory in almost two decades left 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead.
Adding to the tensions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist, far-right coalition government has rejected dialogue with Palestinian leaders, sought to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and promoted a more aggressive response to attacks by the Palestinian insurgency.
On Monday night, Palestinian insurgents said they fired at a bus with Israeli settlers on board near the Palestinian town of Hawara, just south of Nablus, without causing any casualties. The army said it had set up checkpoints to search for the suspects. A little-known local armed group calling itself the “Dawn Brigade” claimed responsibility for the shooting.
So far this year, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, the worst number in more than a decade. Nearly half belonged to insurgent groups and were killed in fighting during Israeli military incursions, but the victims also included young people who threw rocks in protest of the raids and other people unconnected to the clashes.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis have claimed the lives of at least 25 people in the same period.
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