ISRAELI military forces shot and killed two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the two men killed in the West Bank village of Deir al-Hatab as Saud Abdullah Saud and Mohammed Abu Dira.

This is the latest incident in a wave of killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces in the occupied territory.

Some 94 Palestinians have been killed already this year while 19 Israelis were killed during the same period.

The Israeli military said that the men shot at an Israeli outpost near the settlement of Elon Moreh, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus. Israeli soldiers on patrol opened fire, killing the two alleged gunmen.

Palestinian media reported that a third gunman was in the car but managed to flee the area. 

Israeli security forces said that they were searching for other suspected assailants and claimed to have found a pair of M-16 rifles and a pistol at the scene.

The local armed group of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, identified the two men as resistance fighters, sharing photos of them brandishing M-16s in the camp. 

Mr Saud had previously spent 15 years in Israeli prison, the group said.

“We fought as soldiers and we promise we will always be soldiers,” Mr Saud said in a video after being freed from prison last spring.

Tuesday’s deaths followed a week of heightened violence in Israel and the West Bank, touched off by an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, the compound home to the al-Aqsa mosque. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Tuesday that authorities would bar Jewish visits to al-Aqsa, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, for the remainder of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. 

This is a standard arrangement for the final 10 days of the holiday, when Muslims often pray at the site overnight.