Watch: Israeli soldiers blow up explosives during West Bank raid
Israeli soldiers have been filmed firing out of their vehicles at apparent improvised explosive devices as part of a security sweep in the West Bank.
The footage of the raid in Jenin, in the north of the territory, also shows troops filtering through narrow alleyways in the dead of night ahead of storming a building containing alleged terrorists.
The Israel Defence Forces said they were hunting individuals responsible for shooting dead Israeli citizens in an attack on a bus earlier this month.
They said two barricaded themselves into a building and were killed following a firefight.
The activity forms part of Operation Iron Wall, launched on Jan 21, which comes amid continuous tension and violence in the occupied territories, and the fragile ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza, which is unaffected by the operation.
It follows a weeks-long operation by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank to reassert control in an adjacent refugee camp, a major centre of armed militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump announced he was lifting sanctions on ultranationalist Israeli settlers who have attacked Palestinian villages.
A video released on Wednesday shows multiple soldiers firing their rifles from the window of their armoured vehicles, while another shows a raiding party preparing to jump out.
The troops fire their rifles at objects a relatively short distance away in the street which subsequently explode, suggesting they were improvised explosive devices or other munitions put there to harm the advancing soldiers.
One can later be seen holding a large bullet-proof shield.
Meanwhile, explosions are seen going off in Jenin’s narrow streets.
“Overnight [Wednesday], during an intelligence-based Israel security forces counterterrorism operation in the area of Jenin, the forces arrived at a structure in Buqin in which two armed terrorists barricaded themselves,” an IDF spokesman said.
“The terrorists were wanted for the murder of three Israelis. After an exchange of fire, they were eliminated by the forces.”
The IDF said the dead men were Mohamad Nazzal and Katiba Shalabi and that they were affiliated with the Islamic Jihad organisation.
Other pictures show several individuals wearing prison-style boiler suits, with their hands bound behind their backs and apparently blindfolded, being loaded into an Israeli military vehicle.
The three Israelis killed in the Jan 6 bus attack near the West Bank village of al-Funduq were two women in their 70s and a 35-year-old police officer. The driver of the bus was also seriously wounded.
On Thursday, the Norwegian Refugee Council, an NGO consistently critical of Israeli policy, put out a statement describing recent actions in the West Bank as “unnecessary, indiscriminate and disproportionate”.