Two Israelis shot dead in occupied West Bank

Israel’s ambulance service said two men – ages 60 and 29 – were shot near the Palestinian village of Huwara. Paramedics said the two people were targeted inside a carwash.

“Both were unconscious and had sustained gunshot wounds to their bodies,” a spokesperson for the ambulance service stated.

The Israeli army spokesperson for Arabic media, Avichay Adraee, confirmed two Israelis had been killed.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported the Israeli army closed key entrances to the main northern West Bank city of Nablus, and soldiers were forcing businesses to close as they searched for the suspect.

Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou said the attack was the “result of the resistance’s continuous promise to defend our people and respond to the crimes of the occupation”.

The situation in the West Bank has been particularly volatile over the past 15 months with stepped-up deadly Israeli raids and rampages by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages.

Huwara has been the scene of attacks by Israeli settlers and retribution in the form of Palestinian shooting attacks over the past few months.

Saturday’s shooting comes the same day a Palestinian man shot by Israeli forces earlier this week during a raid in the occupied West Bank succumbed to wounds.

Mohammed Abu Asaab was “seriously injured in the head” on Wednesday in Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of the northern West Bank city of Nablus and died Saturday, Wafa reported.

Abu Asaab was hit during clashes that erupted when Israeli “undercover forces” surrounded a house in the camp, it added.

His death made him the 218th Palestinian killed in violence this year linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.