2 Israeli settlers shot dead in West Bank retaliatory shooting

At least two Israeli men have been shot and killed in a retaliatory operation by a Palestinian gunman south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The regime's Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said on Saturday its paramedics carried out resuscitation efforts on a 29-year-old man and a man in his 60s who were hit by gunfire.

The shooting occurred inside a carwash in the Palestinian town of Huwara.

“Both were unconscious and had sustained gunshot wounds to their bodies,” a spokesperson for the ambulance service said.

They were both declared dead at the scene shortly afterward.

The Israeli military said it had launched a manhunt for the assailant and closed off a number of roads in the area.

The Palestinian man is believed by the Israeli army to have approached the carwash on foot and opened fire at the two Israeli men with a handgun, according to a preliminary investigation. It was unclear how the assailant fled.

Circumstances in the area have been particularly volatile over the past 15 months.

The Gaza-based Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance movements lauded the retaliatory attack as a “heroic shooting in Huwara.”

Mohammad Hamadeh, spokesman for the Hamas branch in occupied al-Quds, said the operation conveys a message of strength to the Zionist enemy, and signifies that the Tel Aviv regime’s all-out efforts to eradicate the resistance front through criminal practices are futile.

Hamadeh said the Huwara retaliatory shooting struck fear into the heart of the regime.

ME