Israeli army forces killed two Palestinians, one of them a teenager, during a raid in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank, on Monday night, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

“Qusai Omar Suleiman al-Walaji (16 years old) and Mohammed Ribi Nzoum (25 years old) are dead” after being shot “in the chest” by occupation soldiers [σ.σ. του Ισραήλ] during the attack on Jericho at dawn,” the ministry explained.

Chahal – the Israeli army – for its part announced that during an “anti-terrorist” night operation in the Palestinian refugee camp Aqabat Jabr, near Jericho, suspects opened fire on its forces, which “retaliated with live bullets”.

A 20-year-old man was arrested during the same operation, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The new deaths come against a backdrop of continued escalation of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Israeli army’s raid on the camp lasted less than an hour, residents told Reuters news agency earlier.

The violence in the West Bank has not stopped escalating in the last year and a half, with successive operations by the Israeli army, raids by settlers on Palestinian villages, anti-Israeli attacks.

Since the beginning of the year, at least 216 Palestinians, 28 Israelis, a Ukrainian woman and an Italian have been killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an AFP count based on official announcements from both sides.

In the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel after the 1967 war, about three million Palestinians live, including 490,000 Israeli settlers in settlements that the UN considers illegal under international law.