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Israeli forces killed five Palestinians, including four fighters from the militant group Hamas, in an overnight raid near the city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli officials said yesterday.
Hamas confirmed that four of the men killed during the raid in Deir al-Ghusun village were from its al-Qassam armed wing. The Palestinian health ministry said their bodies had been taken by the Israeli military.
There was no information about the fifth man, whose body was too disfigured for immediate identification, the Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank said.
The Israeli military confirmed the deaths and said an Israeli officer from a special police unit was wounded in the operation it said targeted a Hamas cell responsible for numerous shooting and car bombing attacks.
It said the group was responsible for killing a reservist soldier and wounding a police officer in an attack last November and also carried out a car bombing attack in April which wounded two Israelis including a soldier.
Yesterday’s operation near the flashpoint city of Tulkarm was the latest in a series of clashes in the West Bank between Israeli forces and Palestinians which had escalated for more than two years but has picked up in intensity since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October.
Hamas which Israel has been fighting in Gaza, had also been building its fighting network in the West Bank before the start of the war.
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