JENIN: Israeli forces killed four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, pursuing a half-year-long campaign of raids triggered by a series of lethal street attacks in Israel.

Commandos, some of them undercover, were sent into the town of Jenin to capture two Palestinians suspected of carrying out ambushes, Israeli police said. It claimed Palestinians opened fire and set off a bomb, and were shot, the statement claimed.

The raid touched off clashes elsewhere in Jenin that along with neighbouring Nablus has been a focus of Israeli forces. Some 40 Palestinians were wounded, medics said.

The Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades factions said four of their men were killed. One of them worked for the security services of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.

“We are in great need of members of the security services,” an umbrella group of local militants said in an open statement addressed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Declare the fight, and we will be your soldiers. This enemy knows only the language of firepower,” it said.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2022