Israel said its security forces shot dead three Palestinians blamed for killing a British-Israeli woman and her two daughters last month, in a raid on Thursday in the occupied West Bank.
Two suspects in the killings, members of the militant group Hamas, and a third man accused of helping them were killed in an operation in Nablus by the army, police and the security service Shin Bet, a statement said.
It identified the three dead as the “murderers of Leah, Maia and Rina Dee”, using the Hebrew names of the woman and her two daughters who died after an attack on 7 April on their vehicle near Hamra, in the Jordan valley.
In a separate statement, the army named the two alleged Hamas operatives as Kassan Katnani and Maed Mitsri, and the alleged accomplice as Ibrahim Hura. It said troops recovered two M-16 rifles and an AK-47 from the apartment where the men were holed up.
An AFP correspondent heard gunfire near the Old City around 7am local time as dozens of Israeli army vehicles moved in from multiple directions.
The Palestinian health ministry confirmed that three people were killed in a morning raid in Nablus’s Old City. “Two of the martyrs have completely distorted features due to the intensity of the shooting, which makes it difficult to identify them,” the ministry said.
Hamas described the killing of the three Palestinians as an “assassination” of the “heroes of resistance in the city of Nablus”.
The raid came days after violence flared along the Gaza border after the death of a Palestinian hunger striker in Israeli custody on Tuesday.
Palestinian militants fired more than 100 rockets from Gaza in response to the death of Khader Adnan, 45, a leading figure in Islamic Jihad in the occupied West Bank.
The latest deadly raid brings to 105 the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far this year.
Nineteen Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP count based on official sources from the two sides. These figures include combatants as well as civilians, and, on the Israeli side, include three members of the Arab minority.
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