DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Deadly shooting comes after a Palestinian man shot by Israeli forces this week succumbed to his wounds on Saturday.
Two Israelis have been shot dead south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank by a suspected Palestinian gunman.
Israel’s ambulance service said two men – ages 60 and 29 – were shot near the Palestinian village of Huwara. Paramedics said the two people were targeted inside a carwash.
“Both were unconscious and had sustained gunshot wounds to their bodies,” a spokesperson for the ambulance service said.
The Israeli army spokesperson for Arabic media, Avichay Adraee, confirmed two Israelis had been killed.
#عاجل 🛑 شبهة لارتكاب عملية اطلاق نار تخريبية استهدفت عدد من المواطنين الاسرائيليين في منطقة #حوارة وأسفرت عن مقتل مواطنيْن إسرائيلييْن. قوات جيش الدفاع باشرت بملاحقة المشتبه فيهم ونشرت الحواجز في المنطقة pic.twitter.com/xroJz5rO1U
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) August 19, 2023
Translation: Urgent – suspected terrorist shooting attack targeted a number of Israeli citizens in Huwara, leading to the killing of two. The IDF is tracking suspects and has erected checkpoints in the area.
The situation in the West Bank has been particularly volatile over the past 15 months with stepped up deadly Israeli raids and rampages by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages.
Huwara has been the scene of attacks by Israeli settlers and retribution in the form of Palestinian shooting attacks over the past few months.
In the area, “there has been an intensified military presence for a year now. Huwara has been a flashpoint of a lot of tension. We’ve seen a month ago Israeli settlers rampaging through Huwara during the night, burning Palestinian homes,” said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Bethlehem.
Saturday’s shooting comes the same day a Palestinian man shot by Israeli forces earlier this week during a raid in the occupied West Bank succumbed to wounds.
Mohammed Abu Asaab was “seriously injured in the head” on Wednesday in Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of the northern West Bank city of Nablus and died Saturday, the official news agency Wafa reported.
Abu Asaab was hit during clashes that erupted when Israeli “undercover forces” surrounded a house in the camp, it said.
His death brought to 218 the number of Palestinians killed in violence this year linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Prospects of reviving US-brokered peace talks that collapsed almost a decade ago and that aimed to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, remain dim.