Israeli troops killed two Palestinians on Sunday, Palestinian medics and a militant group said, as Israel pressed on with its crackdown on Hamas, the Islamist group it accuses of abducting three Israeli teens.
Soldiers entered several Palestinian cities and villages in the occupied West Bank, rounding up six suspected militants, the Israeli military said.
Israel has said its West Bank operation is twofold - to find Gil-Ad Shaer and U.S.-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both aged 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, who went missing near an Israeli settlement on June 13, and to deal a substantial blow to Hamas.
Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, has neither denied nor confirmed involvement in the disappearance of the youths.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in public remarks to his cabinet on Sunday, said Israel had conveyed its evidence against Hamas to several countries and would soon make it public. He defended Israel's military action in the West Bank.
"We have no intention of hurting anyone maliciously, but our forces are behaving in the manner necessary for their self-defence and occasionally there are fatalities or wounded on the Palestinian side," Netanyahu said.
The military has so far searched some 1,350 sites in the West Bank and detained more than 330 Palestinians. The raids have triggered street clashes in which four Palestinians have been killed.
During a raid in the city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers fired at stone-throwing Palestinians, killing Ahmad Famawi, 26, residents and medics said.
The military said its soldiers fired at a suspect who approached them without responding to calls to stop. The incident is being investigated, it said, though an "initial inquiry suggests the suspect was mentally unstable".
In Ramallah, the Islamic Jihad militant group said one of its members was killed by Israeli gunfire. The Israeli military said it was "not familiar" with the incident.
REUTERS