Israeli forces kill two Palestinians near Ramallah

Israeli forces have shot dead two Palestinian men during a raid near the town of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.

The two men were killed while in a car in the Jalazone refugee camp north of Ramallah, reports Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian official news agency, Wafa, identified them as 19-year-old Bassel Qassem Basbous and 21-year-old Khaled Fadi Anbar.

A third, Raafat Habash, 19, was wounded in the shooting.

The bodies of the two men were taken by the Israeli army after they were killed, while the man who was wounded was arrested.

News of the killings came in at about 7am local time (04:00 GMT).

The Israeli army said its men were attempting to arrest a suspect in Jalazone when they suspected that the three men were planning to carry out a car-ramming attack against the soldiers, before being shot.

That claim could not be independently verified.

The Fatah movement of Ramallah and el-Bireh region announced a general strike in the areas after the killings.

Israel has been carrying out near-daily raids in the West Bank, largely focused on the towns of Jenin and Nablus, where new armed Palestinian groups have been formed.

More than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the 1967-occupied territories since the start of the year, including 51 in the blockaded Gaza Strip during Israel's three-day assault in August.

In one of the most recent raids, on Thursday in a town near Bethlehem, a seven-year-old boy died after his family said he had been chased by Israeli soldiers.

The US State Department has called for an investigation into the death of Rayyan Suleiman.

Twenty people have also been killed in attacks carried out by Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank in 2022.