Boy among four Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in separate incidents

Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, on Thursday in separate incidents in the occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

Mohammad Samer Khallouf, 14, and Farouk Jameel Salamah, 28, were killed by troops during a rare afternoon army raid in the city of Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said. 

Salamah was a member of the Jenin Battalion armed group and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, according to Palestinian reports. 

The Israeli army confirmed on Twitter that it targeted Salamah during an operation in the city, accusing him of playing a part in the killing of Israeli army commando Noam Raz in May.

Raz was shot and killed by Palestinian fire during an army raid in Jenin. 

Earlier in the day a Palestinian man, identified as 20-year-old Amer Halabiya, stabbed an officer in Jerusalem's Old City before being shot dead, Israeli police said, with two other officers injured at the scene. 

West Bank: October was deadliest month in 'deadliest year' for Palestinians

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Medics from Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service said they treated three men at the scene and took them to hospitals in Jerusalem. 

Shaare Zedek hospital said they were treating a man suffering a stab wound to the torso in moderate condition, and another man who was lightly wounded by a gunshot to the leg, likely from shots fired by police. 

The third man was taken to Hadassah hospital with light injuries. 

Around two hours before the incident in the Old City, a man identified as Daoud Rayyan, 42, was shot dead by Israeli forces in the village of Beit Duqqu, northwest of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa said Rayyan was killed after confrontations broke out when Israeli troops stormed the village, purportedly to search the family house of a man who was killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday after being accused of carrying out a car-ramming attack.

Habes Rayyan, 54, was shot dead on Wednesday at the Beit Sira military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, west of Ramallah.

Israeli officials said Habes, who has a son, Asem, imprisoned in an Israeli jail, had injured an Israeli soldier by driving his car into him.

The four deaths take the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank in 2022 to 135 so far, according to data collected by MEE based on UN figures, the Palestinian health ministry and MEE's reporting. More than 29 of them were children.

In the same period, at least 22 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians, five of them shot dead in the occupied West Bank.

It's the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank on a monthly average since 2005, according to the UN. 

Nablus lockdown ended

Elsewhere, the Israeli army on Thursday lifted a weeks-long lockdown on Nablus.

"In accordance to a routine situational assessment in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank), it has been decided that the general closure that was imposed on the entrances and exits to Nablus will be lifted," a statement from the army said.

A military spokesperson told AFP the lockdown had been lifted at 4am (02:00 GMT).

The Israeli army had said the measures were enforced to stop attacks against Israeli targets carried out by a newly-formed armed group in the city called the Lions' Den.

The army had sealed the city on 11 October after an Israeli soldier was killed near the illegal settlement of Shavei Shomron.

The Israeli army embarked on a widespread manhunt for the shooter, who reportedly belonged to the Lions' Den. 

Last week, five Palestinians, at least two of them unarmed, were killed by Israeli forces targeting members of the group during a three-hour raid in Nablus.

The sweeping closure of Nablus had restricted travel in and out of the city for around 200,000 Palestinians, disrupting daily life, the local economy and access to medical care and education.