The two men had “pulled their shirts up, showing that they were unarmed” before the Israeli military ordered them to go back into a building that they had been holed up in, Al Jazeera quoted journalists in Jenin as saying on Thursday.
“And then they were shot dead. They were executed,” Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the slain men as Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah, 26, and 37-year-old Youssef Asasa.
The Israeli army said in a statement that its troops had pursued wanted individuals who were “affiliated with a terror network” in the Jenin area and had “initiated a surrender procedure that lasted several hours”.
After the men exited the building, “fire was directed towards the suspects”, the statement said. “The incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies.”
But Odeh noted that, historically, Israeli reviews of the killings of Palestinians typically “do not end in indictments or criminal investigations”.
Describing the shootings as “heinous extrajudicial killings” and a “deliberate Israeli war crime”, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the international community “to take immediate action to halt the Israeli killing machine”.
It said more must be done to “deter further crimes, and impose urgent international protection mechanisms for the Palestinian people”, including through United Nations peacekeeping forces.
The Israeli regime’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir welcomed the killings, writing on social media that Israeli forces “acted exactly as expected of them – terrorists must die!”
The incident comes as the Israeli regime deployed attack helicopters and drones in raids across the northern West Bank for a second consecutive day, as a months-long crackdown on Palestinians in the occupied territory intensified.
Israeli troops continued to lay siege to large swaths of the northeastern Tubas governorate on Thursday, a day after they launched a wide-scale military operation in the area.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that at least 25 Palestinians have been injured and 100 others have been detained since the Israeli incursion began on Wednesday.