
The relatives of Palestinian Ameer Bustami, who was killed in a predawn Israeli army, mourn over his body at a hospital morgue in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on February 13, 2022. AFP
The Israeli military said it carried out raids across the West Bank overnight, and said Israeli troops came under fire during the arrest of two men suspected of killing an Israeli soldier in October.
The two wanted men were injured and apprehended in the alleged shootout, the military reported.
The shooting comes as tensions continue to mount between both sides, with Israeli forces conducting near nightly raids killing 150 Palestinians last year in in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B'Tselem.
While some 46 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops since the start of 2023.
In the same vein, 30 Israelis were killed by Palestinians last year, and at least 11 others since the start of the year.
Israel claims that most of those killed have been militants but others not involved in confrontations, have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians claim for their future independent state.
Earlier on Monday, the Israeli military said aircraft struck at what it described as a rocket manufacturing site and military installations in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants launched four rockets into southern Israel overnight. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Gaza-Israel frontier had been largely quiet in recent months, but has seen intermittent rocket fire and airstrikes as tensions between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem have soared.
On Sunday, at the Arab League's (AL) 'Jerusalem Support' conference in Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi called "on the international community and peace partners not to give in to the current political stalemate and work together to implement the two-state solution and provide appropriate conditions for resuming the peace process between Palestine and Israel.”
The conference was attended by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II along with high-level representation from Arab, regional and international bodies.
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