Israeli forces martyr Palestinian, wound eight, in West Bank

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man during an operation in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian Health Ministry or the Israeli military.

Director of the Thabet Thabet Government Hospital in Tulkarm, doctor Amin Khader, told Palestine TV that the Palestinian man who died sustained a gunshot wound in the chest and that at least eight people were wounded.

The Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, identified the dead man as Mahmoud Jarrad. It said he was a member but it did not claim him as a fighter.

Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months amid stepped-up Israeli raids, rampages by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages and Palestinian street attacks.

A U.N. tally showed at least 196 Palestinians and 24 people in Israel have been killed in hostilities since January.

The West Bank is among territories Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war where Palestinians have limited self-rule and which they want as the core of an independent state.

Israel subjects millions of Palestinians to military rule there and it has continued to build settlements, considered by most countries as illegal, which it disputes.

U.S.-brokered peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem collapsed in 2014 and show no sign of resuming.

Some 40,700 Palestinians are registered with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in two camps in the Tulkarm area. They are Palestinian refugees, or their descendants, who were forced out or fled their homes during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.