Akbat Jabar, West Bank — Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen in an attack on a West Bank refugee camp on Monday, Israeli security officials said, in a backlash against Israelis that could further escalate tensions in the region.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health did not immediately confirm the death, saying only three people were injured, one of them seriously.

The violence marks one of the deadliest periods in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years and comes in the first week of Israel’s new government, which has vowed to take a tougher stance against the Palestinians.

The Israeli military said it was operating in the Aqabat Jabar refugee camp to capture the suspects behind last month’s failed shooting attack at a West Bank restaurant, where the attackers were thwarted by a weapons malfunction. The attackers then fled the scene, the military said, and were members of Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip and also has elements in the West Bank.

The army said it was looking for a militant cell behind the shooting that had sealed itself in a house in the refugee camp. During the search, the troops encountered the gunmen and a gun battle ensued. The military said many of the gunmen who were killed were involved in an attempted attack on the restaurant.

Israeli security officials said two of the five killed were Hamas militants involved in the attempted attack. The other three were gunmen who exchanged fire with the army during the raid. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the raid with the media.

Hamas has mourned the deaths of members of its armed wing, without specifying how many died. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said violence would be retaliated against.

“Our people and their resistance will not delay in responding to this crime,” he said.

The raid follows an earlier incursion into the Aqabat Jabar camp near the Palestinian city of Jericho, an oasis in the desert in an area of ​​the West Bank that rarely sees such unrest, where the army was also searching for suspects.

Since the shooting in the nearby settlement, Israeli forces have blocked access to several roads in Jericho – a closure that has put the city under a semi-blockade, disrupted businesses and led to hours-long blockades at checkpoints that also affected Palestinian security forces, footage showed. .

Monday’s violence came after an Israeli army attack on the Jenin refugee camp killed 10 Palestinians, including mostly militants but also a 61-year-old woman. The next day, seven people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in a Palestinian shooting attack outside an East Jerusalem synagogue.

Israeli forces have carried out nightly raids in the occupied West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel last spring. Over the past year amid escalating raids, Jericho has remained a sort of sleepy desert town, avoiding much of the violence.

The Palestinian Authority, in retaliation for last week’s attack on the Jenin refugee camp, announced the suspension of security coordination with Israel.

Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem last year, making it the deadliest year in the area since 2004, according to figures from the Israeli rights group B’Tsalem. Since the beginning of this year, 41 Palestinians have been killed in those territories. About 30 people were killed by Palestinians in Israel in 2022.

The Israeli military says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But stone-throwing youths and others protesting the incursion and not participating in the conflict have also been killed.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War. The Palestinians seek that territory for their own independent state.

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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Wafa Shurafa contributed reporting from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.