Israeli West Bank operation kills four

The death toll rose to four on Thursday in an Israeli operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

"Palestine Red Crescent ambulance teams have just transported an 18-year-old young man who was killed by the Israeli occupation forces in Nur Shams camp," the group said on X, formerly Twitter, adding his death brought the toll to four.

The Israeli military said in a statement early Thursday that it launched an airstrike that killed two Palestinian militants during a raid in the West Bank. It said the two posed a threat to its forces, which were operating in the built-up Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank town of Tulkarem.

The Palestinian Health Ministry and the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service both said four people were killed in Nur Shams, including the two killed in the airstrike, without saying whether they were civilians or combatants.

On Wednesday, a separate Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinian militants traveling in a car in the northern West Bank. The Islamic Jihad group claimed them as members.

Violence across the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the Israel-Hamas war broke out last Oct. 7. Since then, at least 435 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli fire, according to Palestinian health officials.

The Palestinians seek an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.