Israeli forces killed a member of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, witnesses and medics said. A spokesman for Israel's paramilitary border police said its troops were in Jenin as part of a predawn operation against suspected militants, when they saw a Palestinian preparing to throw a pipe bomb at them and shot him. "He was shot by a unit providing covering fire for the unit that he was about to attack," the spokesman said. Jenin residents and hospital officials said the 23-year-old Palestinian was shot in the back. They said there were no wider confrontations at the time with the Israeli troops. Hamas, which has a limited presence in the West Bank though it exercises de facto control over the other Palestinian territory of Gaza, claimed the dead Palestinian as a member. On a Hamas website, the group said he was killed after coming out of a mosque after prayers there. The Israeli border police spokesman said the Jenin raid was not coordinated in advance with the security forces of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which operate in parallel in West Bank cities.
