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BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager during a military operation in Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank early Tuesday, locals and medics said.

Palestinian Red Crescent medics told Ma'an 16-year-old Yousef Abu Zagha was shot by Israeli fire in the chest during clashes with troops who raided the camp overnight.

Abu Zagha was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a public hospital in Jenin.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said that he was a "Hamas operative" about to hurl an explosive device at troops sent to arrest him.

"They opened fire and confirmed a hit," the spokeswoman said.

The killing came after Israeli forces found the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who had been missing in the West Bank for over two weeks.

Israeli forces have killed six Palestinians in the military operation that followed the disappearance of the teenagers from the Gush Etzion settlement on June 12.

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by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

Undercover soldiers of the Israeli military infiltrated into Jenin city, and the Jenin refugee camp, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, shot and killed one Palestinian, and clashed with dozens of local youths.

Local sources said the undercover soldiers assassinated Ibrahim Abu Zagha, 21, after they infiltrated into the Jenin refugee camp, adding that the young man was returning home, carrying food for his family to eat before starting their fast, as the Muslims are marking the holy month of Ramadan.

Abu Zagha was instantly killed after being struck by several rounds of live ammunition, fired by the undercover forces.

Following his death, dozens of soldiers invaded the area, and kidnapped three Palestinians from their homes.

Clashes have also been reported between the invading soldiers and dozens of local youths, in the camp and in Jenin city, as well as several nearby communities.

Dozens of Palestinians suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.

The soldiers also invaded and ransacked several homes, and kidnapped Ahmad Salim an-Nawrasy, Yousef Hasan Shabrawy, and Zein Bilal ad-Damj.

Local sources said the soldiers detonated the front doors of several homes, before invading them and searching them.

Some of those homes belong to detainee Waseem Eid, Baha’ Samih Abu Sbaa’, and Ahmad Abu Khalifa.

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By JODI RUDOREN and ISABEL KERSHNER for the New York Times

JERUSALEM — A pair of tefillin, the leather phylacteries Jews use for morning prayer; a single sandal; shattered spectacles. These were among the clues that led to Monday’s grisly discovery of the bodies of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped June 12 as they hitchhiked home from their West Bank yeshivas.

“It was kind of a puzzle,” a senior Israeli security official said Tuesday morning, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do otherwise. “There was no one golden piece of information.”

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“It’s a huge area,” the senior security official said. “Not hard to hide people there. Every day the search area got narrowed down. It was a complex intelligence operation.”

Israeli ministers met for three hours Monday night but emerged without making decisions about possible retaliation. Haaretz, an Israeli daily, reported that the right-wing defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, proposed establishing a new settlement in memory of the slain teenagers, an idea vigorously opposed by centrist ministers who said it would threaten Israeli’s international legitimacy and divide Israelis at a moment of national unity.

The Palestinian Authority leadership was scheduled to convene Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. as well to consider, among other things, the consequences for its recent reconciliation with Hamas, which Israel says is behind the attack.

“The whole issue of who did this, we don’t know, really, even though Israel managed to punish everybody,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said in an interview. “Hamas says it has nothing to do with it. Hamas has never been self-effacing. Whenever they carried out an operation, they always declared it and took responsibility.”

“In every society you have people who commit crimes, you have people who do things outside the law,” Ms. Ashrawi added. “They may have taken a local initiative, even Israel is saying that.”

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Israeli authorities on Thursday named two men from Hebron, Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, who have not been seen since the June 12 abduction, as the kidnappers. Both men have spent time in Israeli jails, and, the authorities said, Mr. Qawasmeh admitted to having been recruited by Hamas’ military wing.

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Ribhi Abu Aisha, a relative, said Mr. Abu Aisha’s brothers are currently in Israeli prisons and his father was also imprisoned there. One brother, according to Israel’s security service, was killed in 2005 when he tried to hurl an explosive at Israeli soldiers.

Hamas leaders have praised the kidnapping but not claimed responsibility for it.

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The Israeli authorities pushed their search on Tuesday for the two men as well as “other people in the second and third circles” with knowledge of the attack, according to Colonel Lerner, the army spokesman. In a late-night arrest raid in Jenin, Colonel Lerner said, Israeli troops shot and killed one of the three wanted men after he threw a grenade at them, bringing to six the number of Palestinians that soldiers have killed in the West Bank since the abduction.