FILE PHOTO: Palestinian mourners cry after taking the last look at the body of Mohammad Balhan, 15, during his funeral in the West Bank refugee camp of Aqabat Jaber, Jericho, Monday, April 10, 2023. AP
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the two men killed in the West Bank village of Deir al Hatab as Saud Abdullah Saud and Mohammed Abu Dira, without saying their ages.
The Israeli military said the men shot at an Israeli outpost near the settlement of Elon Moreh, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus. Israeli soldiers on patrol opened fire, killing the two alleged gunmen.
Palestinian media reported that a third gunmen was in the car during the drive-by shooting and fled the area. Israeli security forces said they were searching for other suspected assailants and found a pair of M-16 rifles and a pistol at the scene.
The local armed group of the Balata refugee camp, a militant stronghold near Nablus, identified the two men as militants, sharing photos of them brandishing M-16s and posing together in the camp. Saud had previously spent 15 years in Israeli prison, the group said.
“We fought as soldiers and we promise we will always be soldiers,” Saud told reporters after being freed from prison last spring in a video widely circulated online.
Tuesday's deaths followed a week of unusually heightened violence in Israel and the West Bank, touched off by an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site, the compound home to the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Last week, the Israeli military struck sites linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip after militants in the two territories fired salvos of rockets at Israel. The mosque sits on a contested hilltop revered as the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism.
So far this year, 94 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank, according to a tally by The Associated Press, at least half of them affiliated with militant groups. During that time, 19 people were killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
* This story has been edited by Ahram Online
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