RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, as the army claimed rocks were thrown at Israeli forces during a raid.

“Samir Aouni Harbi Aslan, 41, was killed after he was wounded by a bullet of the Israeli occupation army that penetrated his chest during the aggression on Qalandia camp” for Palestinian refugees near Ramallah, the ministry said.

The Israeli military said troops fired on people who “hurled rocks and blocks from the rooftops aiming at soldiers operating beneath”.

Eighteen people were arrested in overnight raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said.

Mohammed Saed, a representative of community leaders in Qalandia camp, said Aslan was shot when Israeli forces raided his home.

“He was killed in his house but he was not involved in the confrontation; he was just trying to defend his son” from arrest, Saed told AFP.

Aslan is the third Palestinian killed in the West Bank in 24 hours, and the seventh since the start of the year.

On Wednesday, an Israeli civilian shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian who had knifed an Israeli near a settlement in the southern West Bank.

The incident came hours after Israeli troops killed a Palestinian militant in a firefight during an incursion by Israeli forces into the northern city of Nablus.

A surge in bloodshed last year saw at least 26 Israelis and 200 Palestinians killed across Israel and the West Bank, according to an AFP tally.

More than 150 of the fatalities were in the West Bank.

After a series of attacks targeting Israelis last March and April, Israeli forces stepped up raids in the northern cities of Jenin and Nablus, bastions of armed Palestinian factions in the West Bank.