Palestinian security officers have killed a gunman in the occupied West Bank in a rare intra-Palestinian clash whose circumstances were disputed and which the fighter’s faction described as an Israeli-style “assassination”, Reuters reports.

Palestinian Authority security services spokesperson Talak Dweikat has said a force sent to patrol Tulkarm overnight came under fire and shot back, hitting the gunman. He died from his wounds in hospital.

Videos circulated online, which Reuters was not immediately able to confirm, showing a car being hit by gunfire.

A local armed group, the Tulkarm and Nour Shams Camp Brigades, claimed the dead man, Ahmed Abu al-Foul, as its member with affiliation to the group Islamic Jihad.

Al-Foul was “treacherously … targeted in his car” without provocation, the brigades said in a statement. “This crime is just like any assassination by Israeli special forces.”