Two more Palestinians were killed Tuesday by the Israeli military during a raid in the occupied West Bank, adding to the deadly violence that has gripped the region in recent months.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the two men killed in the West Bank village of Deir al Hatab as Saud Abdullah Saud and Mohammed Abu Dira, without providing their ages.
The Israeli military claimed the men shot at an Israeli outpost near the settlement of Elon Moreh, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus. Israeli soldiers on patrol opened fire, killing both Palestinians.
Palestinian media reported that a third man was in the car and fled the area. Israeli security forces said they were searching for him and allegedly found a pair of M-16 rifles and a pistol at the scene.
The local armed group of the Balata refugee camp, a militant stronghold near Nablus, identified the two men as armed members. Saud had previously spent 15 years in Israeli prison, the group said.
"We fought as soldiers and we promise we will always be soldiers," Saud said in a video after being freed from prison last spring.
Tuesday's deaths followed a week of unusually heightened violence in Israel and the West Bank, touched off by an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site, the compound home to the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Last week, the Israeli military struck sites linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip after they allegedly fired salvos of rockets at Israel. The mosque sits on a contested hilltop revered as the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism.
Underscoring the ever-combustible situation in the West Bank, two British-Israeli sisters and their mother were killed when their car came under fire near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank last Friday.
The mother, Lucy Dee, succumbed to her wounds on Monday and was laid to rest in the settlement of Kfar Etzion south of Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Hundreds of mourners packed the funeral, singing and swaying as Lucy's husband, Leo, and his remaining children wept at the podium - their family of seven reduced to four.
So far this year, 94 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank, according to a tally by The Associated Press. During that time, 19 people were killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
In a step toward deescalating the situation, Netanyahu's office said Tuesday that authorities would bar Jewish visits to Al-Aqsa for the remainder of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. That's standard for the final 10 days of the holiday when Muslims often pray at the site overnight.
Jews are permitted to visit the compound, but not pray there, under longstanding agreements. But such visits, which have grown in numbers in recent years, have stoked anger, particularly because some Jews are often seen quietly praying.
The rare convergence of the Jewish Passover festival and Ramadan brought scores of religious Jews to the site last week and fueled tensions that spiraled into unrest in Jerusalem – and a regional confrontation.
