Israeli forces raid a West Bank town, sparking a firefight that kills a Palestinian teacher

The Israeli military on Friday raided a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank, besieging an apartment and sparking a gunfight with local militants that killed an apparently uninvolved Palestinian teacher, his family and Palestinian health officials said. It was the latest in a series of Israeli army raids in the occupied territory that have resulted in a high Palestinian death toll.

Israeli security forces stormed into a town near Tubas, northeast of the Palestinian city of Nablus, and surrounded a house where militants were believed to be holed up. Israeli soldiers called on the wanted militants through loudspeakers to surrender, residents said.

When the gunmen refused, the Israeli military launched soldier-fired missiles and grenades at the building to try to force them out. Videos showed giant plumes of smoke billowing from the apartment.

But the gunmen refused to surrender themselves and managed to flee the wrecked house, the local branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group claimed. “Our fighters provided cover with heavy fire to break the siege on the house and allow our brothers to withdraw safely from the area," the group said in a congratulatory message to its members.

The Israeli army said it searched the hide-out and found improvised explosive devices in a children's room, along with other military equipment like high-capacity gun magazines. It said its forces arrested two suspects in the town of Aqaba near Tubas, without specifying whether they were the wanted militants in the besieged building.

During the firefight, 36-year-old Palestinian Abdulrahim Ghanem was killed while walking home to his wife after spending the early morning tending to his sheep and vegetables at his farm, his 33-year-old cousin Islam said.

Ghanem worked as an eighth grade English teacher at a school in the area, Islam added, declining to give his own last name for fear of reprisals. He said that Ghanem avoided politics as much as he could and had no connection to the local armed group.

The Israeli army said it was not specifically aware of Ghanem's situation but that soldiers reported they killed one Palestinian who they identified as a gunman. The contradictory accounts could not immediately be reconciled.

Over 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since the start of this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and those not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.