Two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in West Bank violence

Israeli border police said gunman 'neutralised' after firing at undercover officers

Israeli soldiers take positions during clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron, on March 11. PA

Two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Israeli border police said violence erupted during a raid to detain suspected militants.

They said a gunman fired at undercover officers who shot back, "neutralising" him, during an operation in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

In a second refugee camp near Jerusalem, border police said forces on a separate arrest raid encountered hundreds of Palestinians who threw heavy objects from rooftops, endangering the troops.

It was not immediately clear whether the Palestinian killed there had taken part in the clash.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the fatalities. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the incidents as extrajudicial killings.

"These crimes amount to war crimes and crimes against the international law that must be punished by the international law," it said in a statement.

'A new uprising'

In Gaza, a representative for the ruling Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Hazem Qassem, said: "We are witnessing a new uprising, a new era of the struggle that aims to end the existence of the occupation on this land."

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, territories where Palestinians seek statehood, in the 1967 Middle East war. The last round of peace talks collapsed in 2014.

The Palestinian Authority, set up under interim peace accords with Israel in the 1990s, exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, but Israeli forces are dominant in the area, where they often carry out raids to detain suspected militants.

Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, in February.