An armed member of a Palestinian radical group was shot dead in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops near Nablus in the West Bank today, a Palestinian security source said.
Khamis Ahmed Ali, 42, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed near the Aksar refugee camp in a half-hour clash which began around 4 a.m. (2 a.m. Irish time), the source said.
The death brought to 1,138 the number of people killed as a direct result of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which broke out on September 28th, 2000, including 874 Palestinians and 242 Israelis.
An Israeli military spokesman said the army would issue a statement on the incident later.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, has vowed revenge for the alleged assassination by Israel of one of its leaders in the West Bank town of Tulkarem on Monday.
It has killed a soldier and a Jewish settler since then and yesterday called on all Palestinian radical movements to attack Israel.
AFP