Israeli forces kill Palestinian police officer, two teenagers in Jerusalem, Nablus

Kufr Aqab: Israeli forces fatally shot two Palestinian teenagers on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority said Friday, while the Israeli police said they had opened fire on people posing a threat.

“The young man Amr Khaled Ahmed Al-Marbou (18) and the boy Sami Ibrahim Sami Mashayekh (16) were martyred by occupation forces gunfire in the town of Kufr Aqab,” the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.

Israeli police told AFP that during a deployment in Kufr Aqab overnight, it fired “at four individuals who posed an immediate threat to the personnel” during clashes involving dozens of individuals who threw rocks and fireworks.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it transported two people from Kufr Aqab to a hospital during the night, both with gunshot wounds.

Several hundred people, mostly young men, took part in the funeral processions for Marbou and Mashayekh on Friday, clapping and chanting.

The deceased were draped in Palestinian flags with their heads covered with the traditional black and white Palestinian keffiyeh. Relatives recited prayers around the bodies.

Oday al-Shurfa, a friend of Marbou, told AFP he witnessed the incident, which occurred during clashes between Israeli forces and local Palestinians.

“He was just standing there, not holding or throwing stones,” he said.

Shurfa said Marbou was hit “in the chest, in the heart. He collapsed and was martyred on the spot,” he said.

A relative of Marbou, who declined to give her name, told AFP: “He was with four others; one of them was also killed, another is in critical condition,” and another suffered a serious hand injury.

“What kind of brutality is this?” she said.

Palestinian police officer

The Palestinian Authority later said that Israeli forces killed a man it named as Younis Walid Mohammed Ashtiyeh, 24, in the town of Tal, southwest of Nablus.

Palestinian media reported that he was a police officer.

Later on Friday, Israeli border police said they had “eliminated the terrorist who fired at and injured a reserve combat soldier during operational activity yesterday (Thursday)”.

“The terrorist was an operative in the Palestinian Police,” a joint statement from the border police, the military and the Shin Bet internal security agency said, adding that others were arrested.

An AFP photographer in the area on Friday saw dozens of burned0out cars in Huwara, as well as a home that was set on fire in the village of Ammuriya.

Residents said the fires in both areas had been started by settlers.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

Kufr Aqab is part of east Jerusalem, an area of the West Bank annexed by Israel. Although part of the Jerusalem municipality, Kufr Aqab is separated from it by the barrier built by Israel.

The town does not receive proper services from the Jerusalem municipality due to the barrier, nor does it receive them from the adjacent Palestinian towns of Ramallah and Al-Bireh.

Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.