“Israeli Forces Kill 3 Palestinians in West Bank, Says Palestinian Ministry”

Palestinian sources have reported that three Palestinian fighters were killed during an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian health ministry has identified the men as Muhammad Abu Zaytoun (32), Fathi Abu Rizk (30) and Abdullah Abu Hamdan (24), who were killed in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. The Israeli army has not yet commented on the incident. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, has stated that the three were among the group’s “fighters”. The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War, with nearly three million Palestinians living there alongside around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered to be illegal under international law. The latest deaths come just over a week into a fragile Gaza cease-fire after a five day cross-border conflict between Israel and the Islamic Jihad militant group. Since the start of the year, at least 153 Palestinians, 20 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.