At least two Palestinians killed in Nablus in latest Israeli raid

Two Palestinian youth have been killed after Israeli forces raided the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, officials said.

The raid took place early Friday morning, with some locals describing it as an “invasion”, and resulted in the deaths of Hamza Maqbool and Khairi Shaheen, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher.Israeli forces raided the city in search of the two men, one confirmed to be affiliated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, said Fisher, reporting from the Occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

The men were tracked down to a house in old Nablus. Israeli forces then used loudspeakers to ask the men to surrender themselves, Fisher said.

They were met with the return of improvised explosive devices, which prompted the Israeli army to call for more reinforcements, he added.

“It appears there was some sort of confrontation between the two men in the house and the Israeli army, and the two men in the house were shot dead,” he said.The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement its crews “transferred the bodies of two martyrs from the Old City of Nablus”.

Israeli forces cordoned off the house before fatally shooting the men, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Three others were also injured, Al Jazeera TV reported.

The incident came less than two days after an Israeli army raid in the Jenin refugee camp that killed 12 Palestinians and wounded 140 others, 30 of them seriously.

The raid, which forced thousands to flee the camp which was left in rubble and ruin, was the largest Israeli attack in the West Bank in more than 20 years.

Israel has been conducting near-daily raids and killings of Palestinians in the West Bank since June 2021 in an attempt to crack down on a growing armed resistance.