Two Palestinians, who according to the Israeli armed forces were “threatening” their soldiers, were killed in an airstrike near Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health announced in the early hours of the morning.

The Israeli armed forces announced shortly after midnight (local and Greek time) that they were conducting an operation in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nur Shams, next to Tulkarem, in the northwestern part of the West Bank.

“During the operation, an aircraft struck two terrorists who posed a threat to our forces,” the Israeli armed forces said in a terse statement.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health confirmed the two deaths from Israeli fire in the Noor Shams refugee camp. The bodies of the victims were taken to a hospital in Tulkarem.

Yesterday Wednesday three Palestinians, including one who presented himself as an officer of the military arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a car in Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian armed movements in the northern part of the West Bank.

In the evening, hundreds of people, including young men carrying automatic rifles and firing bursts into the air, attended the funerals of the three men in a refugee camp on the edge of the city, AFP reporters found.

Since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by an attack by Hamas’ military arm in southern Israel on October 7, violence has escalated further in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

According to Palestinian Authority figures, more than 430 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or Jewish settlers since then, while thousands more