Israeli forces kill eight Palestinians in West Bank

Troops raided a town in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, touching off clashes

Israeli soldiers operate amid what the Israeli army says is the ongoing ground operation against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in a location given as Gaza, in this screen grab from a

Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, seven of them in clashes during a raid in the town of Tulkarm near the boundary with Israel, Palestinian medics and local media said.

The Israeli army and police said their forces, sent into Tulkarm to detain suspected militants, came under fire and killed several Palestinian gunmen in the ensuing skirmish.

An Israeli air strike hit a group of Palestinians who shot and threw a bomb at the group, an army and police statement said. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said the air strike was carried out by a drone and killed three people.

There was no word of Israeli casualties and no Palestinian armed faction said it had lost members in the incident.

An eighth Palestinian was killed by Israeli gunfire on Tuesday in Beit Aynoun, north of the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, medical officials said.

Israel has been striking armed groups in the West Bank with increasing intensity as it wages war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, another territory where Palestinians seek to establish an independent state.

Anger over the fighting has risen in the West Bank and many parts of the Arab world, and calls for a ceasefire in Hamas-controlled Gaza are growing.