It was also the first time in 10 years more Palestinians were killed in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in 2013, an Israeli-based rights group B'Tselem was cited as saying on Monday by regional news outlets.

Three Israeli military forces were also killed -- two in the West Bank and one in Gaza, the group added in a statement.

B'Tselem further elaborated that in many of the West Bank cases, Israeli soldiers shot at Palestinians who were throwing stones, "one man was shot when he tried to enter Israel without a legal entry permit," and "one woman passerby was shot by the military who argued that a Molotov cocktail had been lobbed in the area."

Two Israeli soldiers were killed in separate incidents in the West Bank in 2013 and an Israeli fixing the border fence with the Gaza Strip was shot dead by a sniper from inside the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Meanwhile, the group’s spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli slammed the Israeli army's "lack of seriousness" in probing the incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli occupation forces.

It added that the Zionist regime’s military has only once indicted and convicted a soldier in some 28 separate incidents that have killed 35 Palestinians in the past two-and-a-half years.

"Investigations are now launched almost automatically," said the group’s director in the statement.

"Yet the essence of the investigative mechanism remains unchanged... in which practically no one is held accountable for the killing of Palestinians," the statement further noted.

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