Israeli forces kill Palestinian youth during West Bank raid

By Raneen Sawafta

TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) -Israeli forces shot dead an 18-year-old Palestinian during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, amid one of the deadliest periods of violence in the area in years.

The Israeli military said soldiers shot at suspects who fired and hurled explosives and stones at troops operating around the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm. It said hits were identified but reported no injuries to its forces.

The health ministry said Mahmoud Abu Sa'an was shot in the head in Tulkarm, during what the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said was a military operation in a nearby refugee camp that led to confrontations with Palestinians.

One mourner, Amjad Zeidan, who said he witnessed the incident from about 200 metres away, added that he did not see Abu Sa'an carrying weapons or explosives.

"I can still see his image," Zeidan said, choking back his tears, as mourners trickled into the family's home to pay their respects. "As soon as I saw him laying on the ground, I said 'May Allah have mercy on him'."

Some 40,700 Palestinians are registered with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in two camps in the Tulkarm area. They are Palestinian refugees, or their descendants, who were forced out or fled their homes during the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.

Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months amid stepped-up Israeli raids, Palestinian street attacks and rampages by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry described Abu Sa'an's killing as a "field execution" and called on the International Criminal Court to "break its silence and promptly complete its investigation into the crimes of the occupation".

The Islamist Hamas movement, which governs blockaded Gaza, mourned Abu Sa'an but did not claim him as a member. "Our people will continue their revolution until the occupation ends," it said in a statement.

Israel occupied the West Bank, among territories the Palestinians want for an independent state, in a 1967 Middle East war. It has continued to build Jewish settlements there, which most countries deem illegal.

(Reporting by Raneen Sawafta and Ali Sawafta; Additional reporting and writing by Henriette Chacar; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Hugh Lawson)