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Illustrative: Maan News file photo
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HEBRON (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces detained a Palestinian man from a grocery store in the southern occupied West Bank village of Bani Naim east of Hebron Sunday afternoon, locals sources said.

Locals told Ma'an that Israeli forces raided the grocery store and after checking Mahmoud Muhammad al-Khaddour's identity card, they handcuffed him, detained him, and took him to unknown location.
Israeli forces meanwhile detained six Palestinians in the Hebron district in military raids before dawn on Sunday.

Earlier this month, Israeli forces shot and killed Bani Naim resident Fares Moussa Muhammad Khaddour and critically wounded his fiancee Raghad Abdullah Khaddour, after the two attempted to carry out a car ramming attack near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba just outside of Hebron's Old City.

While it could not be confirmed if Mahmoud Muhammad al-Khadour was directly related to the two, Israeli forces have carried out a policy of collective punishment against extended family members of alleged attackers since a wave of unrest spread across the occupied Palestinian territory nearly a year ago, while also targeting and imposing punitive measures against residents of entire villages or districts that alleged assailants have originated from -- in the form of detentions, withholding the bodies of slain Palestinians, road closures, and revoking travel permits.

The incident near Kiryat Arba came an uptick in violence after a period of relative calm, with seven Palestinians -- all but one having been from the district of Hebron -- being shot dead since Sep. 15.

On the same day Fares Khaddour was killed, Muhammad al-Rajabi, 15, was shot dead after he allegedly stabbed and lightly injured an Israeli soldier in Hebron's Old City.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the extended Rajabi family in its entirety -- about 17,000 people -- was banned from entering Israel in the wake of the incident.

The Israeli army has also blockaded Bani Naim and deployed an additional battalion to the Hebron district, while an Israeli army officer vowed strict punitive measures would be would be imposed on Palestinian civilians in the area.

An Israeli army spokesperson said they were looking into reports of Mahmoud Muhammad al-Khadour's detention. She also said she was looking into the current status of road closures around Bani Naim.

Israel has come under harsh international condemnation for its response to attacks, which rights groups have said amounts to “collective punishment” and represents a clear violation of international law.

The Hebron area in particular has grown as an epicenter of upheaval over the past year, with Israeli authorities severely restricting the movement of Palestinians in parts of its Old City, including Tel Rumeida, as a "closed military zone" for several months, while closures on Hebron in July saw the most widespread restrictions on movement in the occupied West Bank in two years.