Ramallah: A senior Israeli army officer shot and killed a Palestinian youth who was throwing stones near a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Friday, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

A Palestinian witness and an Israeli regime’s military spokeswoman said the Palestinian was among a group throwing stones at an army vehicle near Qalandiya, a major checkpoint between occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The witness said the army vehicle stopped and soldiers got out and fired at the youth, whom a hospital official in Ramallah identified as 17-year-old Mohammad Sami Al Ksbeh. The hospital official said Al Ksbeh had been shot in the head and chest.

Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner confirmed that an Israeli colonel, a brigade commander in the West Bank, had shot Al Ksbeh. Israeli media published photos of the colonel’s vehicle with a smashed windscreen, which they said was hit by the thrown stones.

While there is a widespread presence of Israeli troops and military police throughout the West Bank, it is rare for a senior officer to be involved in a shooting incident.

Meanwhile, Palestinian national security forces have arrested around 100 Hamas members in the West Bank, a security official said on Friday, raising tension between the Islamist movement and its Ramallah-based rivals.

The people, arrested overnight, “intended to carry out attacks against the Palestinian [National] Authority [PNA],” the official said, without elaborating.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri condemned the arrests as a “dangerous escalation which blocks efforts and reconciliation.”

He also criticised the PNA for its “security cooperation with the Israeli occupation.”

Under 1993 peace accords, the PNA coordinates on West Bank security with Israel, including by sharing intelligence.

The PNA is dominated by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, which is Hamas’s bitter rival. It regularly arrests members of the movement, but as many as 100 members in one swoop is rare.

In June 2014, Israel detained hundreds of Hamas members in the West Bank after blaming the group for the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

The latest arrests came amid tension between Hamas and the West Bank-based PNA, more than a year after the two sides signed a unity deal that failed to end a years-long Palestinian split.

In April 2014 Fatah signed a unity deal with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

The two sides approved a government of independent technocrats to take over administration of the Gaza Strip, Hamas’s bastion, and the West Bank.

But disputes over the payment of Hamas-appointed employees in Gaza, and control of the territory, mean Hamas remains in control of the enclave.