Balata Refugee Camp, Aug 19 (AP) Two Israelis were killed in a suspected Palestinian shooting attack on Saturday in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said, the latest outburst of violence to rock the region.

The military said it was searching for suspects and setting up roadblocks near the town of Hawara, a volatile area in the northern West Bank.

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Since last spring, the West Bank has seen some of the deadliest fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in nearly two decades.

Also Saturday, the Israeli military said it was looking into reports of a shooting in a volatile area of the West Bank. The country's rescue service said two men, aged 60 and 30, were wounded. Further details were not immediately available.

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According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, Mohammad Abu Asab, 19, was shot in the head on Wednesday during an Israeli army incursion into the Balata refugee camp near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. It cited medical officials.

The Israeli military said in its statement Wednesday that a commando unit raided Balata seeking to destroy an underground weapons factory.

While demolishing the site and its stockpile of improvised explosives, the military said a gunfight broke out in the dense camp's warren of alleys between soldiers and armed Palestinians.

Wafa reported that during the fighting, Abu Asab was shot in the head and then taken to the Rafidia hospital in Nablus where he later died from his wounds.

Palestinian health officials did not immediately confirm the death.

It was not immediately clear if Abu Asab was affiliated with a militant group and he wasn't immediately claimed as a member by any group.

A surge of violence has gripped the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem for more than a year.

Israel has been staging near-nightly raids since last spring in response to a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks. It's become the fiercest fighting in the West Bank in some two decades.

Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in those areas since the start of 2023, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Nearly half of them were affiliated with militant groups, though the Israeli military says that number is much higher. In that time, Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed 27 people in Israel and the West Bank.

Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see the violence as a natural response to 56 years of occupation, including stepped-up settlement construction by Israel's government and increased violence by Jewish settlers.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians seek the territories for their hoped-for independent state.(AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)