At least 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others wounded in a gun battle between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinian groups in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Israeli military and Palestinian officials said.

The deaths occurred during an operation to arrest Palestinian gunmen based in the city of Nablus, the Israeli military said. Some of the victims were reported to be gunmen but others appeared to be unarmed: Time-stamped CCTV footage from late Wednesday morning that circulated on social media seemed to show the shooting of at least two unarmed Palestinians as they ran away from gunfire.

Asked for comment, the Israeli military said that it was looking into the video. The deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year to more than 50, most of them during shootouts that the Israeli military says began during operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen.

That death toll marks the deadliest start to a year for Palestinians in the West Bank in the past decade, prompting comparisons with events at the start of this century, when a Palestinian insurgency, known as the second intifada, left roughly 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead.

At least 11 Israelis have also been killed by Palestinians since the start of the year, including seven in a mass shooting on January 27 by a Palestinian attacker in East Jerusalem — the deadliest attack in the city since 2008. A spokesman for the Israeli Army said that it was operating in Nablus to arrest people suspected of planning more imminent attacks and of shooting dead an Israeli soldier last October while he was patrolling a nearby part of the northern West Bank.

The Islamic Jihad militant faction said two of its Nablus commanders had been encircled in a house by Israeli troops, triggering a clash that drew in other gunmen. Explosions sounded and local youths pelted armoured troop transports with rocks. Palestinian sources said the two Islamic Jihad commanders were killed along with another gunman.

The fatalities also included at least three civilians, among them a 72-year-old man and a 14-yearold boy. Ninety-seven Palestinians were injured, six of them critically, local medics said. Nablus and nearby Jenin have been a focus of raids that Israel has intensified over the last year following a spate of lethal Palestinian street attacks in its cities.

“We condemn the occupation’s raid into Nablus and we call for an end to the continued attacks against our people,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Hamas militant group issued a veiled threat. “The resistance in Gaza is observing the enemy’s escalating crimes against our people in the occupied West Bank, and its patience is running out,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the group.

The group has battled Israel in four wars since seizing control of Gaza in 2007, and Israeli officials have expressed concerns about rising tensions ahead of Ramazan.

(New York Times News Service)