Palestinians report 2 killed in W. Bank riots

Palestinian security and medical sources say two people were shot dead by Israeli forces in separate clashes in the northern and central West Bank earlier today.

Tamer Smour, 22, is said to have been hit by a live bullet in the chest in the city of Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army says some “1,200 rioters” were hurling “rocks and Molotov cocktails at troops and at an industrial center in the vicinity, endangering workers and passers-by.”

“The forces used riot dispersal means and once these means were exhausted they fired at the main instigators,” she says.

In a separate clash in Saffa, a village west of Ramallah, 19-year-old Udai Nafez was killed in a clash with Israeli forces, medical sources says. Ahmad Bitawi, director of the Ramallah governmental hospital, tells AFP that Nafez died in his hospital after being shot in the chest. The IDF has no immediate comment on the Saffa incident.

— AFP