RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed five armed Palestinian fighters in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, Israeli police said.
The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the deaths of only four men.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah party, said in a later statement on Wednesday that four of its members were "martyred after a coward assassination operation" by special forces of the Israeli army.
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA earlier said that Israeli special forces had opened fire on a vehicle the men were travelling in, in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank.
The Palestinian movement Hamas also said while commenting on the killing of the Palestinians in Nablus: "The resistance in Nablus and all the West Bank cities will not be broken", adding that the "policy of assassinations will not succeed in weakening the people's confrontation".
Violence has surged across the West Bank since the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians - including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths and civilian bystanders - have been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian street attacks over the past year. At least six people were wounded, two of them seriously, in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Hadera on Wednesday, Israeli authorities said.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Maayan Lubell, additional reporting by Jaidaa Taha, Editing by William Maclean)
