FIVE more Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces over the last few days in the occupied West Bank.

On Thursday, Israeli forces carried out raids on towns in the Jenin governorate, north of Jerusalem, killing Atta Shalabi, Sidqi Zakarneh, Tareq Al-Damaj and 16-year-old Diaa Muhammad Rimawi.

The day before, on Wednesday, resistance fighter Mujahed Najjar Hamed was shot and killed near the village of Deir Dibwan in Ramallah after a days-long manhunt.

He had carried out several shooting operations targeting the illegal Israeli settlement of Ofra, as well as military checkpoints outside of Ramallah, and had been evading an Israeli search for several days.

Since the beginning of the year, 223 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.

Fifty-seven of these were killed in Jenin, including the award-winning Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed earlier this year.

An eyewitness account of the killing on Thursday said Israeli forces targeted resistance fighters Sidqi Zakarneh and Tareq Damaj as they were sitting in a vehicle near a coffee shop located just outside the Jenin refugee camp.

The eyewitness said Mr Zakarneth and Mr Damaj did not engage in armed confrontation with the Israeli forces, and exchange of live fire was not reported, indicating that their killing was a deliberate execution.

“A true massacre,” another eyewitness reported to local journalists shortly after the brutal killings.

“They got out of the car and their bodies were riddled, specifically their heads and faces,” he said. 

“As [the two men] were being shot, a sniper fired at a third man,” who was later identified as Atta Shalabi.

Mr Shalabi, a labourer from the town of Qabatiya in Jenin, was killed while heading to work.