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Palestinian militant teen killed by Israelis in West Bank clash / Photo: © AFP
Palestinian militant teen killed by Israelis in West Bank clash
Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenage militant when clashes broke out during a Saturday raid in the flashpoint Jenin area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian sources and the army said.
"A 17-year-old boy was killed... by the Israeli occupation's bullets during its aggression on Jenin," the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement after the latest deadly violence.
It added that an 18-year-old was critically wounded. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa identified the dead teenager as Amjad al-Fayed.
A hub of armed Palestinian groups, the Jenin area in the northern West Bank has been repeatedly raided by Israeli forces since a wave of anti-Israeli attacks in late March. Many of the perpetrators came from there.
The Israeli army said that during "operational activity" near Kafr Dan, a village northwest of Jenin, "a number of suspects shot live fire at... soldiers from a passing vehicle.
"The suspects also hurled Molotov cocktails and an explosive device toward the soldiers," it said in a statement.
"The soldiers responded with live fire toward the suspects," it added. "Hits were identified."
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed Fayed as a member and a "son", praising him in a statement for confronting the Israeli soldiers with gunfire and explosive devices.
The Israeli forces "were exposed and confronted with valor by our battalion's" fighters, Islamic Jihad said in a statement, "and thwarted their insidious scheme."
At Fayed's funeral in the Jenin refugee camp, armed members of the militant group carried his coffin.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh condemned Fayed's killing, stressing in remarks relayed by Wafa that "the international community should hold Israel accountable for its acts".
The Jenin-area operations to track down suspects, and clashes with Palestinians, have often turned deadly for both sides.
Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American, died when she was shot in the head near the Jenin refugee camp on May 11 while covering an Israeli raid.
In other overnight operations at a variety of locations throughout the West Bank, Israeli forces arrested nine Palestinian suspects and confiscated weapons as part of "counter-terrorism activities", the army said in a Saturday statement.
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and controls all entry points to the territory.
About 475,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, considered illegal under international law, alongside 2.9 million Palestinians.
A wave of anti-Israel attacks since March 22 in Israel left 18 people, mostly Israeli civilians, killed by several Palestinian and Israeli Arab attackers, some of whom died in the violence.
Clashes since then with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem have left 34 Palestinians, including Abu Akleh, dead as well as an Israeli commando.
P.Thomas--SFF
