The Israeli occupation forces shot dead two Palestinian teenagers in the northern occupied West Bank on Sunday, Israel's army claimed, the latest deaths in a months-long wave of unrest.

An army statement claimed the pair attacked an Israeli patrol west of the city of Jenin with rocks before firing on soldiers with a rifle.

"The force responded to the shooting and fired towards the attackers, resulting in their deaths," it said.

The Palestinian health ministry named those killed as Nihad Waked and Fuad Waked, both 15 years old. They were not thought to be closely related.

It was the latest incident in an almost four-month long surge of Israeli-on-Palestinian deadly repression met with violent responses by Palestinians against settlers and Israeli soldiers.

The recent surge in violence has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

Since the start of October, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 170 Palestinians. Meanwhile, almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by frustrated and unarmed Palestinians have killed 26 Israelis as well as an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP count.

The current wave of protests by Palestinians and repression by Israeli occupation forces started in late July when toddler Ali Dawabsha was burned to death and three other Palestinians were severely injured after their house in the occupied West Bank was set on fire by Israeli settlers.

Settlement-building, racial discrimination, confiscation of identity cards, long queues at checkpoints, as well as daily clashes and the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque, describe Palestinians' daily suffering.

The anger of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem has increased in the last three years after the Israeli authorities allowed increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to storm the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The surge in violence has been fuelled by Palestinians' frustration over Israel's 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state, and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinian leaders say a younger generation sees no hope for the future living under Israeli security restrictions and with a stifled economy. The latest round of US-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014.

*The story has been edited by Ahram Online.