Israeli forces kill suspects in teens' deaths

An Israeli army spokesman said two Palestinians suspected in the fatal abduction of three Israeli teens in June have been killed in a shootout with Israeli forces.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner says the suspects were killed in the West Bank on Tuesday.

The teens' abduction in the West Bank followed several incidents between Palestinians and Israelis, including the shooting of two Palestinian teens at a demonstration in May. The kidnapping of the trio sparked a massive manhunt, leading to the arrest of hundreds of activists who belonged to the group Hamas and culminating in Israel’s summer offensive on Gaza.

The bodies of the three Israelis were found three weeks later and a suspected mastermind was arrested.

Israel had spent months searching for Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, both men in their 30s from the Hebron area, after naming them as the killers of the Israeli teens who had been grabbed and shot dead near a Jewish settlement on June 12.

Hebron residents said troops had surrounded a house in the Hebron University neighborhood before dawn on Tuesday and reported sounds of gunfire.

Lerner said the forces were seeking to arrest the two men when a firefight erupted, and they were killed.

"We opened fire, they returned fire and they were killed in the exchange," Lerner said. "We have visual confirmation for one. The second one, we have no visual confirmation, but the assumption is he was killed."

Palestinian officials have not confirmed the men, who were affiliated with Hamas, were killed. Israeli forces released the bodies to the Palestinians in the morning, witnesses told Al Jazeera, and they were on their way to a Hebron hospital. A relative said Aysha's mother identified his body.

After the three teens — Jewish seminary students Eyal Yifrach, 19, and 16-year-olds Gilad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel — went missing, Israeli forces began West Bank sweeps and rounded up hundreds of suspected Hamas members.

The bodies of the Israeli teens were found in June near Hebron. After initially denying involvement in the killings, Hamas last month acknowledged responsibility. Following the discovery, the conflict spiraled out of control, and a Palestinian teen was killed by hardline Israelis in a suspected revenge for the kidnapping.

The arrest of several hundred Palestinians in house-to-house raids across the West Bank stoked hostilities with Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, where Israel launched an offensive on July 8 after a surge of Palestinian rocket fire at its towns.

Gaza medical officials say 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the violence. On the Israeli side, 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were also killed.

Al Jazeera and wire services