Israeli troops gun down Palestinians who killed three Israeli women

Nablus, West Bank — Israeli forces killed two Palestinian gunmen on Thursday, who shot dead a British-Israeli mother and her two daughters in April in the occupied West Bank, Israel's domestic security service said.

A third militant who had aided the two gunmen was also killed in the raid, Israel’s Shin Bet service said. The Palestinian health ministry said there had been three fatalities during the raid in the city of Nablus.

Palestinian militant group Hamas said the men killed were members of its armed wing and confirmed they had carried out the April 7 attack in which British-Israeli Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia and Rina, were killed, while travelling from their home in a West Bank settlement.

The operation in Nablus came after an exchange of cross-border strikes between Israel and Gaza earlier in the week and in more than a year of violence that has seen repeated Israeli raids in the West Bank as well as a series of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.

The shooting attack on the women, which British foreign minister James Cleverly described as “abhorrent”, shocked Israelis, who flocked to the Dees’ funerals in April.

In a radio interview with Israeli public broadcaster Kan, Rabbi Leo Dee, the family's father, thanked the Israeli security forces and said he was more consoled by meeting transplant patients this week who had received his wife’s organs.

“That was a great comfort,” Dee said.

In Nablus, witnesses said Israeli undercover units had surrounded a house in the old city, before a gun battle which left the structure badly damaged by explosions and bullet holes.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 100 Palestinians, most of them fighters in militant groups, have been killed by Israeli forces and at least 18 Israelis and foreigners have been killed.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem threatened revenge for the killing of the gunmen who were barricaded in the house. "The occupation will pay the price for its crimes against our people and for the assassination today," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that those who harmed Israelis were eventually reached. “It doesn't matter where you try to hide — we will find you,” he said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rud, blamed Israel for the escalation and called on the US to intervene.

Reuters