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Man killed in Israeli hospital arrest raid

Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian man as they raided a hospital looking for a suspect in a stabbing attack.

A video emerged of the arrest showing plainclothes Israeli security forces entering the hospital posing as a family - including one disguised as a woman in labour.

Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency, combined with Border Police forces and the IDF, were in Hebron's Al Ahli hospital to arrest Azzam Shalaldeh, a 20-year-old suspected of stabbing and seriously injuring an Israeli civilian on 25 October.

The Shin Bet said the troops came under attack from one of the man's relatives, 27-year-old Abdallah Shalaldeh, and responded by shooting him dead.

Dr Jihad Shawar, director of the Al Ahli hospital in the West Bank city, said more than 20 Israeli forces had gone to a surgical unit and stormed a room where Shalaldeh was being treated for gunshot wounds.

Dr Shawar said the forces handcuffed Shalaldeh and a brother who was in the room, then shot dead Abdallah as he emerged from a bathroom.

He said: "This is an outright crime. This is against international law. No one should violate hospitals, but Israel did."

The Israeli military did not provide additional details of the operation, or say whether the troops were undercover. It also did not give the identity of the man who was shot.

The military said it arrested Shalaldeh, who was born in 1995 and comes from a family of "known Hamas operatives."

The raid is the latest violent incident in two months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Twelve Israelis have been killed in a spate of attacks by Palestinians, while 78 Palestinians have been killed, 50 of them said by Israel to be attackers, and the remainder killed in clashes with Israeli forces.

The violence erupted in Jerusalem over tensions surrounding a holy site sacred to both Jews and Muslims and quickly spread into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

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