Israeli army kills Palestinian gunman in raid

A Palestinian boy places stones at the place were Bakir Hashash, 21, was shot by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Nablus on January 6, 2022. The Israeli army said its troops had shot at an armeShow more

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian who opened fire on them during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus early on Thursday, the Israeli military said.

The military said it was carrying out an operation to arrest a wanted suspect when armed men began firing on the troops. It said forces killed one of the gunmen. No soldiers were injured and the suspect was arrested, the military said.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, identified the man as Bakir Muhammad Musa Hashash, 21, saying he was critically wounded and died after clashes with the military.

The incident comes amid a surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent weeks.

Last month, a Palestinian gunman opened fire on a car filled with Jewish seminary students near a West Bank settlement outpost. Yehuda Dimentman, 25, was killed and two others were wounded near Homesh, which is considered illegal by the Israeli government.

Also last month, a Palestinian attacker stabbed and seriously wounded an ultra-Orthodox Jew outside Jerusalem’s Old City. And over a week before that, a Hamas militant opened fire in the Old City, killing an Israeli man.

At the same time, settler violence against Palestinians has increased, particularly in the northern West Bank.

Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, and the territories are now home to more than 700,000 Israeli settlers. Most of the international community considers Israeli settlements illegal and obstacles to peace.

The Palestinians seek East Jerusalem and the West Bank as parts of a future independent state, along with the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew in 2005.