Israeli Forces Kill 2 Palestinians Who Carried Out West Bank Bus Attack

Armed men from Hamas secure aid trucks that arrived the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, days after a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Armed men from Hamas secure aid trucks that arrived the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, days after a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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Israeli Forces Kill 2 Palestinians Who Carried Out West Bank Bus Attack

Armed men from Hamas secure aid trucks that arrived the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, days after a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Armed men from Hamas secure aid trucks that arrived the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, days after a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israeli forces have killed two Palestinians who carried out a deadly attack on a bus in the West Bank earlier this month.
The Israeli military said Thursday that the two men barricaded themselves in a structure in the West Bank village of Burqin and exchanged fire with Israeli troops before they were killed overnight. The army said a soldier was moderately wounded, The Associated Press said.
The military said Mohammed Nazzal and Katiba al-Shalabi were operatives with the Islamic Jihad group.
The Hamas group released a statement claiming the two men were members of its armed wing and praising the bus attack. Hamas and the smaller and more radical Islamic Jihad are allies that sometimes carry out attacks together.
The Jan. 6 attack on the bus carrying Israelis killed three people and wounded six others.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.



Iraq’s FM: Israeli-Russian Hostage Tsurkov is Alive

Israeli-Russian Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov. AFP
Israeli-Russian Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov. AFP
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Iraq’s FM: Israeli-Russian Hostage Tsurkov is Alive

Israeli-Russian Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov. AFP
Israeli-Russian Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov. AFP

Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who is being held hostage by an Iraqi militia, is alive and the Iraqi prime minister is working on her release, Iraqi foreign minister Fouad Hussein told Axios reporter Barak Ravid on Thursday.

Tsurkov, a 38-year-old student at Princeton University, disappeared in Baghdad in March 2023 while doing research for her doctorate. She had entered the country on her Russian passport.

The only sign she was alive has been a video broadcast in November 2023 on an Iraqi television station and circulated on pro-Iranian social media purporting to show her.

No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. But Israel believes she is being held by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia.