The West Bank has been increasingly rocked by violence in recent weeks (Picture: EPA/AFP/Getty Images)
Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in an attack on a bomb storage centre in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, officials and emergency workers said.
According to the Israeli military, soldiers raided a refugee camp on the northern side of the West Bank to destroy a militant command centre.
Bombs were detonated and explosives were reportedly hurled at Israeli forces by militants at Nour Shams camp, about two miles to the east of Tulkarem.
Dozens of explosives and bomb-making components were uncovered, the military said.
‘During the activity, suspects opened fire and hurled explosive devices at the forces who responded with live fire,’ it added in a statement.
The six-hour pre-dawn raid saw two Palestinians ‘killed by live Israeli bullets to the head’, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The operation saw Israeli security forces push into the Nur Shams refugee camp before dawn (Picture: EPA)
At least two Palestinians were killed and an Israeli soldier injured, officials said (Picture: AFP)
Palestinian health officials identified the two killed as Osaid Abu Ali, 22, and Abd al-Rahman Abu Daghash, 32.
They included a fighter from Hamas, Reuters reported, with the Islamist group adding they belonged to its armed wing.
The Israeli army said a soldier had been ‘moderately injured by gunshot fragments’.
Roads were heavily damaged after engineering vehicles dug around for explosive devices, with metal roofing sheets and building rubble scattered.
About 13,500 Palestinian refugees are registered in the camp, according to the UN, one marked by unemployment, overcrowding and open sewage.
Heightening tensions have seen the northern West Bank increasingly spiral into violence, with the region being widely seen as a pilot scheme for Israeli disengagement from the occupied territory.
Roads in the camp were gutted (Picture: Reuters)
But Palestine says that Israel’s recent wave of raids is deepening the country’s 56-year occupation of the West Bank, steadily chipping at the self-ruling Palestinian Authority government and doing little to tamper the fighting.
At least 190 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank so far this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
Medical Aid for Palestinians, a London-based non-profit, says that this year has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the region since the UN began recording in 2005.
Israel claims that many of those killed have been militants, with 31 people killed in Palestinian attacks against its forces this year.
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