Two Israelis killed in West Bank shooting as tensions spike

Two Israelis were killed and two more seriously wounded in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, following a bloody 24 hours in which three Palestinians were shot dead.

"A Palestinian opened fire at a bus stop killing 2 Israelis, severely injuring 1 & injuring others at Asaf Junction, north of Jerusalem," the Israeli military said on its Twitter account.

An army spokesperson was unable to confirm reports that the assailant targeted Israeli soldiers.

Witnesses reported that a man disembarked from a vehicle and opened fire before fleeing the scene.

The attack reportedly took place near Ofra settlement.

Israeli reprisal killings

Hours earlier, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man after an alleged stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City.

That incident followed the overnight killing of two Palestinians allegedly connected to attacks targeting Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli Shin Bet security service said late on Wednesday its forces had killed Salah Barghouti during an operation in a village north of Ramallah in the central West Bank.

The 29-year-old had been accused of shooting at Israelis outside a settlement on Sunday, wounding seven people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant.

Doctors tried to save the baby boy with an emergency caesarean but he died on Wednesday, before being buried in Jerusalem.

His mother remains in hospital in a serious condition.

The exact details of Barghouti's shooting remained murky, but pictures have circulated online of a taxi with multiple bullet holes north of Ramallah.

Manhunt

Separately, in the early hours of Thursday, a Palestinian suspected of shooting dead two Israelis two months ago was killed dead by Israeli forces near Nablus in the northern West Bank.

Ashraf Naalwa, 23, was killed when forces tried to arrest him, Shin Bet said in a statement.

The house near the northern Nablus where Naalwa was found was peppered with bullet holes after the raid, with furniture destroyed, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

Local resident Huwayda Bushkar said she saw Israeli soldiers carrying a body as they left.

On October 7, Naalwa allegedly shot and killed two Israelis, 28-year-old Kim Yehezhel and 35-year-old Ziv Hagbi, in the Barkan industrial zone settlement.

The two were employees of the recycling company where Naalwa worked.

The violence came amid heightened tensions in the West Bank.

Since Sunday's attack Israeli forces had made a series of incursions into central Ramallah, the home of secular Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

In recent days Hebrew posters have been erected in the West Bank encouraging the killing of Abbas.

Israel seized control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem in a 1967 war. Around 600,000 Israelis now live in settlements there considered illegal by the international community.

Many Palestinians consider violence against Israelis in the West Bank a justified response to the growth of settlements on land they see as theirs.