A Palestinian lawyer and teenager were killed on the fifth day of Israeli attacks in the West Bank following deadly attacks on the Jewish state amid heightened tensions following the vandalism of a religious site.
Israel has sent additional forces and reinforced its wall and fence with the occupied territory after four deadly attacks claimed the lives of 14 people in Israel, most of them civilians, in the past three weeks.
Wednesday’s deaths have killed 17 Palestinians in the ongoing escalation.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said 34-year-old human rights lawyer Mohammed Hassan Mohamed Asaf “died after being shot in the chest by the Israeli occupying army during the aggression against the city of Nablus” in the northwest coast.
The Israeli army has not confirmed that its forces shot the lawyer.
In the evening, the ministry said Israeli forces had shot dead a teenager “during his aggression against Hussein” in the southwest coast.
The military said in a statement that soldiers had shot dead a Palestinian suspect who “threw a Molotov cocktail” at them, adding that troops had “used ammunition to stop the immediate threat”.
A community leader in Husan said the deceased was 16-year-old Kusay Hamamra.
Hundreds of Palestinians have revolted in the area since the incident, the army said.
Violent clashes erupted earlier in the day in Nablus, where Israeli forces escorted a task force to repair Joseph’s tomb.
The site is sacred to Jews and was vandalized last weekend.
Israeli soldiers racing through the streets of the city in an armored convoy opened fire as the mob pelted them with stones and incendiary devices.
“Hundreds of Palestinians staged a violent riot, burned tires and threw stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers, who responded with” means to disperse riots and ammunition, “the army said.
Witnesses said Asaph was standing by the roadside, having just taken his nephews to school when he was hit by a bullet while Israeli forces fired as they withdrew from Nablus.
Asaf complained that he was a “fierce defender of his people” by his employer, the Commission on Colonization and Resistance on the Wall of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
Following the news of his death, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Steyeh accused Israeli soldiers of “killing for murder, with a license granted by the Prime Minister of the occupying state Naftali Bennett, without the slightest respect for international law.”
Bennett warned that Israel was now “on the offensive” and determined to arrest suspected fighters.
The latest major attack on Israel was last Thursday’s shooting in Tel Aviv, which killed three people and injured more than a dozen. Jenin’s gunman was killed in a shootout with Israeli forces after a night of persecution.
Israeli police said Wednesday that their special forces had arrested a Palestinian in Kubar and three others in Silvad, a village north of Ramallah, who were planning an attack on Israelis.
The Homeland Security Agency, Shin Bet, said the Kubar suspect, identified as Moat Hamed, had escaped from Palestinian custody where he had been detained for his role in the 2015 Israeli assassination.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli army said it had carried out “counter-terrorist operations” in the Palestinian armed bastion of Jenin and other cities in the West Bank.
In the town of Tulkarem, Israeli border police said they had shot and wounded a “terrorist suspect” who had escaped from special forces in an attempt to arrest him.
Bennett swore on Sunday that “we will not withstand such an attack on a place that is sacred to us – on the eve of Easter,” the Jewish holiday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported 31 people injured around the site of Nablus and a nearby village, including 10 wounded by live shelling.
The holy site, where Jews say the biblical patriarch Joseph is buried, is a common point of ignition between Israelis and Palestinians. It was partially destroyed in 2000 during a Palestinian uprising and also set on fire in 2015.
Palestinian Authority considers the wider site to be an Islamic archeological site where a revered cleric was buried two centuries ago.
The clashes took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and before the start of Easter on Friday, an overlap that could increase tensions over sacred sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Last year, Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, fired rockets at Jerusalem after riots at the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, sparked a devastating 11-day war.
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