RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Two Palestinian women, one of them pregnant, were killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said, as Israel stepped up raids on militants in the area.
The ministry said Israeli forces in Nur Shams in the northern West Bank shot 23-year-old Sundos Jamal Mohammed Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant and whose unborn child did not survive, and critically wounded her husband.
The Israeli military said the incident was being probed by its military police criminal investigation unit.
Details of the deaths were not immediately clear. The Palestinian state news agency cited eyewitnesses as saying that Shalabi and her husband were shot as they were trying to leave their home.
Another woman, aged 21, was shot dead in a separate incident, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli military said its forces were scanning a house for a militant and that they called on inhabitants to exit the building. The woman did not come out and was fatally wounded when they used force to breach the door, the military said.
It added that it regrets harm to civilians, which it tries to prevent.
Earlier on Sunday, the military announced it was expanding a counter-terrorism operation in the north of the West Bank to Nur Shams, a historic refugee camp close to the Palestinian town Tulkarm.
Israel’s military, police and intelligence services started the counter-terrorism operation in Jenin on January 21, described by officials as a “large-scale and significant military operation”.
The operation expanded to Tulkarm, Al Faraa and Tamun, with the military saying it was targeting militants.
Israel, viewing the West Bank as part of a multi-front war against Iranian-backed groups established around its borders, launched the operation after reaching a ceasefire in its war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Thousands of Palestinians have fled West Bank homes in the wake of the military campaign and widespread destruction.
Palestinians have said the Israeli campaign is one of the most destructive in recent memory. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry. The Israeli military has said it has killed militants.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by William Mallard, Christina Fincher and Giles Elgood)
