Israeli forces killed five armed Palestinian fighters in the occupied West Bank, Israeli police said according to Reuters.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the deaths of only four men.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah party, said in a later statement that four of its members were “martyred after a coward assassination operation” by special forces of the Israeli army.

The Palestinian official news agency WAFA earlier said that Israeli special forces had opened fire on a vehicle the men were travelling in, in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank.

The Palestinian movement Hamas also said while commenting on the killing of the Palestinians in Nablus: “The resistance in Nablus and all the West Bank cities will not be broken”, adding that the “policy of assassinations will not succeed in weakening the people’s confrontation”.