RAMALLAH: Palestinian security officers killed a gunman in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, a rare intra-Palestinian clash whose circumstances were disputed and which the fighter’s faction described as an Israeli-style “assassination”.
Palestinian Authority security services spokesperson Talak Dweikat said a force sent to patrol Tulkarm overnight came under fire and shot back, hitting the gunman. He died from his wounds in hospital.
Videos circulated online, and which Reuters was not immediately able to confirm, showed a car being hit by gunfire.
A local armed group, the Tulkarm and Nour Shams Camp Brigades, claimed the dead man, Ahmed Abu Al-Foul, as its member with affiliation to the largely militant group Islamic Jihad.
Al-Foul was “treacherously ... targeted in his car” without provocation, the brigades said in a statement. “This crime is just like any assassination by Israeli special forces.”
President Mahmoud Abbas’ PA wields limited self-rule in the West Bank, and sometimes coordinates security with Israel.
Parts of the territory have drifted into chaos and poverty, with the PA and Israel trading blame, especially since ties have been further strained by Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
Hamas, an Islamic Jihad ally which rules the Gaza Strip and has chafed at Abbas’ strategy of seeking diplomatic accommodation with Israel, denounced “the attacks by the PA’s security forces on our people and our resistance fighters”.
Palestinian security forces and gunmen have exchanged gunfire several times in the last year, but deaths are rare.

TEHRAN: Iran announced on Thursday sanctions on several American and British individuals and entities for supporting Israel in its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The Islamic republic, the regional arch-foe of Israel, unveiled the punitive measures in a statement from its foreign ministry.
It said the sanctions targeted seven Americans, including General Bryan P. Fenton, commander of the US special operations command, and Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, a former commander of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
British officials and entities targeted include Secretary of State for Defense Grant Shapps, commander of the British army strategic command James Hockenhull and the UK Royal Navy in the Red Sea.
Penalties were also announced against US firms Lockheed Martin and Chevron and British counterparts Elbit Systems, Parker Meggitt and Rafael UK.
The ministry said the sanctions include “blocking of accounts and transactions in the Iranian financial and banking systems, blocking of assets within the jurisdiction of the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as prohibition of visa issuance and entry to the Iranian territory.”
The impact of these measures on the individuals or entities, as well as their assets or dealings with Iran, remains unclear.
The war in the Gaza Strip erupted after the October 7 attack by Palestinian militants on Israel which killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Iran backs Hamas but has denied any direct involvement in the attack.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has since killed at least 34,568 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.