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Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded at least eight others during an operation in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Friday, Palestinian officials said.
The Israeli military said soldiers operating in the city of Tulkarm fired at suspects who shot at them, threw explosives and rocks and blocked roads, and that “hits were identified”. It said a number of military vehicles were damaged but no injuries to the forces were reported.
The director of the Thabet Thabet government hospital in Tulkarm, Amin Khader, told Palestine TV that the man who was killed had sustained a gunshot wound in the chest and that at least eight other people were wounded.
The Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, identified the dead man as Mahmoud Jarrad. It said he was a member but it did not claim him as a fighter.
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Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months amid stepped-up Israeli raids, rampages by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages and Palestinian street attacks.
A United Nations’ tally showed at least 196 Palestinians and 24 people in Israel have been killed in hostilities since January.
Palestinians have limited self-rule in the West Bank, among territories Israel captured in a 1967 war. Israel subjects millions of Palestinians to military rule there and has continued to build settlements, considered by most countries as illegal, which it disputes.
[ Israeli settlers build new outposts amid rising West Bank tensions ]
US-brokered peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem collapsed in 2014 and show no sign of resuming.
Some 40,700 Palestinians are registered with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in two camps in the Tulkarm area, descendants of people who were forced out or fled their homes during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. – Reuters