Israel kills 2 Palestinian gunmen in West Bank raid

By Atef Sa’ad

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli troops killed two
Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday
and gunmen shot dead a member of Hamas’s military wing in
mounting internal violence in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has stepped up raids in the West Bank
since an April 17 suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic Jihad
group killed 11 people in Tel Aviv in the deadliest attack in
Israel in two years.

In the Gaza Strip, violence between rival Palestinian
factions has risen since the Islamic militant group Hamas came
to power in March after an upset victory over the long-dominant
Fatah movement in a January election.

An Israeli military source said troops surrounded a house
in the West Bank town of Nablus where the suspected militants
were hiding, then exchanged fire with gunmen at the scene,
shooting three of them.

The bodies of two gunmen were taken to a nearby hospital.
The soldiers arrested a third gunman who was wounded, the army
and Palestinian sources said.

Medics said the dead gunmen wore green wristbands written
in Arabic identifying them as belonging to Islamic Jihad. The
group did not immediately confirm their identities.

Soldiers killed seven gunmen, six from Islamic Jihad, in
two separate West Bank raids on Sunday.

In a drive-by shooting in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp,
gunmen killed a Hamas militant, medics said. Another Hamas
militant was killed in a similar shooting in Gaza City on
Tuesday.

No one claimed responsibility for either shooting.

Three gunmen were killed and a dozen people wounded in
violence between Fatah and Hamas last week fueled by a power
struggle between loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah
and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader.

The two groups had since agreed to set up a joint committee
to defuse tensions.

Israel withdrew from Gaza last year and internal clashes in
the territory since then have raised fears among Palestinians
of civil war.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)