Israel says it killed Palestinian who was involved in a soldier's murder

The Israeli military said an attack on Gaza on Thursday killed a Palestinian who was waving blood-stained hands in a crowd after a deadly attack on Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank more than two decades ago.

The Civil Defense Authority in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip confirmed the death of Abdelaziz Salha, saying he was killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in a refugee camp in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza early Thursday.

Salha was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for his role in the murder of Israeli soldier Vadim Norzich in the West Bank city of Ramallah four years earlier. This was an incident that was caught on camera by an Italian television crew and broadcast around the world.

A second soldier, Yossi Avrahami, was also killed in the October 2000 attack.

The widely shared footage – one of the most famous images from the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising – showed Salha standing in an upstairs window of the Ramallah police station and waving his blood-stained hands to a crowd.

The military announced his death in an airstrike and said Salha had been involved in terrorist activities in the West Bank since his release from prison in 2011 and “in recent years.”

The army statement said he remained “involved in Hamas terrorist activities to this day.”

Salha was sent to Gaza by Israeli authorities upon his release from prison, one of 1,027 Palestinians released in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was taken hostage by militants in the Gaza Strip in 2006.