Palestinian teen killed by Israelis in West Bank

RAMALLAH, Palestine — Israeli occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian teenage when confrontations broke out during a Saturday raid in the flashpoint Jenin area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian sources and the army said.

"A 17-year-old boy was killed... by the Israeli occupation's bullets during its aggression on Jenin," the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement after the latest deadly violence.

It added that an 18-year-old was critically wounded. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa identified the dead teenager as Amjad Al Fayed.

The Israeli occupation forces claimed that during "operational activity" near Kafr Dan, a village northwest of Jenin, "a number of suspects shot live fire at... soldiers from a passing vehicle".

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed Fayed as a member and a "son", praising him in a statement for confronting the Israeli soldiers with gunfire and explosive devices.

The Israeli troops "were exposed and confronted with valor by our battalion's" fighters, Islamic Jihad said in a statement, "and thwarted their insidious scheme."

At Fayed’s funeral in the Jenin refugee camp, armed members of the Isalmic Jihad group carried his coffin.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh condemned Fayed’s killing, stressing in remarks relayed by Wafa that “the international community should hold Israel accountable for its acts”.

Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American, killed when she was shot in the head near the Jenin refugee camp on May 11 while covering an Israeli raid.

In other overnight operations at a variety of locations throughout the West Bank, Israeli forces arrested nine Palestinian suspects and confiscated weapons as part of “counterterrorism activities”, the army said in a Saturday statement.

About 475,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, considered illegal under international law, alongside 2.9 million Palestinians.