RAMALLAH, Palestine / ISTANBUL

Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli army fire in a military raid in the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Health Ministry said.

A ministry statement said two men, aged 29 and 20, lost their lives in the town of Tammun, south of Tubas, and their bodies were withheld by Israeli forces.

Witnesses told Anadolu that army forces moved into the town and surrounded a house in the eastern outskirts, triggering clashes with locals. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the house during the raid, the official news agency Wafa reported.

The Israeli army sent large military reinforcements and deployed infantry forces and snipers in the area, besieging the area for hours, they added.

Escalation has been running high across the occupied West Bank since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, where more than 65,400 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023.

Since then, at least 1,046 Palestinians have been killed and more than 10,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.