Two Israeli civilians were killed Saturday in an attack in a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, amid an outbreak of violence between Palestinians and Israelis since the beginning of the year, the Israeli army said.

The attack “was carried out against a number of Israeli civilians in the area of ??the village of Huwara”, the army said in a statement, adding that two civilians were killed in the shooting.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the army had closed the main entrances to Nablus, a large Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, and that the soldiers were forcing businesses to close while they searched for the suspected perpetrators of the attack. attack.

Abdelatif al-Qanou, a spokesperson for Hamas, an Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip but also active in the West Bank, hailed this operation, which he said is “the result of the resistance’s constant promise to defend our people and respond to the crimes of the occupation”.

However, Hamas has not formally claimed responsibility for the attack.

Since the beginning of 2023, the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has been the scene of a series of attacks by Palestinians against Israeli targets, as well as violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, particularly in the village of Huwara located south of Nablus.

At the end of February, after the death of two Israeli settlers in the area of ??Huwara, dozens of other settlers had swept over this village and set fire to numerous buildings and vehicles, provoking a wave of indignation, locally and internationally.

At least 218 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the year in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as 30 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian, according to an AFP count compiled from official sources.

These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.

08/19/2023 17:23:27 – Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP