JENIN, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed a Palestinian gunman during a raid that set off clashes in the flashpoint town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, medical officials and militant groups said.
The Palestinian health ministry said one of its staff, a woman, was also seriously injured.
The dead 32-year-old was a senior operative with Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, according to relatives.
Israel’s military said soldiers came under fire, and shot back, during a mission to arrest suspected members of the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad faction. A gun and a dozen bombs were also captured in the operation, during which a soldier was lightly wounded, the military statement said.
Israeli forces blew up a house belonging to the dead man’s family and another bakery, according to witnesses.
Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months with stepped-up Israeli raids, Palestinian street attacks and assaults by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages.
Israel captured the West Bank, which Palestinians hope will form the core of a future independent state, in a 1967 war. It is among territories where the Palestinians seek to establish a state.
Israel has since settled the territory, while the Palestinians are split between a Western-backed administration and armed Hamas Islamists who reject coexistence with Israel.
(Reporting by Nidal Almughrabi and Raneen Sawafta; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
