Israeli soldiers killed a 13-year-old Palestinian in clashes during West Bank raids on Friday, hospital officials said, as a search for three Israeli teens feared abducted in the territory entered its second week.
Three other Palestinians were seriously wounded by army gunfire during raids in four towns and refugee camps.
Friday’s death raised to two the number of Palestinians shot dead by troops during search operations this week.
The three Jewish seminary students disappeared on June 12 while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Israel has blamed the Islamic militant Hamas group for the apparent abduction, but has offered no proof.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the search to promote two other objectives — a new crackdown on Hamas and an attempt to discredit the Palestinian unity government formed earlier this month by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which is supported by Hamas.
Hamas has praised the abduction of the teenagers, but has not claimed responsibility for it.
The group has abducted Israelis in the past to press for the release of thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
In Hebron, families of Palestinians arrested recently in Israeli raids protested after weekly Muslim prayers. They gestured with three fingers, one for each missing teen, in a sign of their support for the abduction.
The gesture has become popular on social media among Palestinians and others who support the abduction of the teens.
Over the past week, thousands of Israeli troops have searched hundreds of locations in the West Bank and arrested more than 300 Palestinians, many from Hamas.
The Israeli military said it conducted raids in four towns and refugee camps early on Friday, detaining 25 suspects and searching about 200 locations.
The army said it searched nine institutions linked to Hamas and confiscated materials.
In one raid, in the town of Dura near Hebron, Palestinian youths threw stones at soldiers, drawing army fire.
A hospital official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, said 13-year-old Mohammed Dodeen was killed by a bullet in the chest.
The army also opened fire during a raid in the Qalandiya refugee camp, where three Palestinians were seriously wounded, said Ahmed Bitawi, director of Ramallah’s hospital.
The army confirmed soldiers used life fire, saying they were responding to life-threatening situations, and added that the troops engaged in sporadic confrontations during Friday’s raids. Palestinians threw homemade explosives, firebombs, fireworks and stones, and in Qalandiya, a soldier was lightly wounded by a grenade thrown at troops, the military said.
A senior Israeli intelligence officer said on Friday that anyone linked to Hamas was potentially a target for arrest.
He acknowledged that despite recent government declarations of a major crackdown on Hamas, both Israel and Abbas’ Palestinian Authority have already dismantled much of the movement’s West Bank infrastructure in recent years.
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