Israeli Forces Kill Two West Bank Suspects in Kidnap and Killing of Jewish Teenagers

Israeli forces have killed the two suspects in the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank in June, according to an Israeli military spokesman.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner confirmed that Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, "came out shooting" at approximately 6am local time on Tuesday in the West Bank city of Hebron before being killed by Israeli forces.

"In that exchange, one of them was killed on the spot," Lerner said.

"We have one confirmed kill and the second assumed killed. Because of how he fell back into the void and the grenades that we threw after him, it's very unlikely that he survived."

"They were armed, they were in hiding, they were fugitives and they understood we were trying to find them," he added.

"The intelligence indicated that their intention was to fight back, and we took the necessary precautions in order to address that threat."

The three teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, were kidnapped while hitchhiking in the occupied West Bank before being shot dead.

Rachel Fraenkel, the mother of Naftali, said that her children had celebrated the news of the suspects' deaths but she had "no emotional reaction".

"My kids are happy that the bad guys are gone," she said. "We were worried about these two dangerous people, with weapons, having nothing to lose being out there. It's a relief to know that they won't hurt any other innocent people."

Qawasmeh had been arrested eight times by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, most recently in 2010, with connections to the Islamist group Hamas.

Their kidnap and killing led to an escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians which culminated in the seven-week Gaza conflict which killed over 2,100 Palestinians - leaving more than 500 children dead and 100,000 homeless - and 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians before a ceasefire was agreed last month.