Israeli forces kill eight Palestinians in West Bank -medics

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) -Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, seven of them in clashes during a raid in the town of Tulkarm near the boundary with Israel, Palestinian medics and local media said.

The Israeli army and police said their forces, sent into Tulkarm to detain suspected militants, came under fire and killed several Palestinian gunmen in the ensuing skirmish.

An Israeli air strike hit a group of Palestinians who opened fire and threw a bomb at the forces, an army and police statement said. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said the air strike was carried out by a drone and killed three people.

The Tulkarm Brigades, a local armed group, issued a statement saying it mourned the seven who were killed but it did not claim them as members.

Subsequently, video circulating on social media showed Israeli bulldozers destroyed a monument to the founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat in Tulkarm.

Tulkarm, a major crossing point into Israel, has seen a series of clashes between Israeli forces and local militant groups as well as bands of stone-throwing youths during a sharp surge in violence since the deadly attack on southern Israel by Hamas gunmen last month.

Tuesday’s raid came after Al Qassem Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, put out a video claiming two attacks near the northern West Bank city of Nablus two days previously.

An eighth Palestinian was killed by Israeli gunfire on Tuesday in Beit Aynoun, north of the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, medical officials said.

Israel has been striking armed groups in the West Bank with increasing intensity as it wages war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, another territory where Palestinians seek to establish an independent state.

Anger over the fighting has risen in the West Bank and many parts of the Arab world, and calls for a ceasefire in Hamas-controlled Gaza are growing.

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