An Israeli soldier has reportedly been stabbed to death while waiting at a bus station near a local mall in the southern town of Arad after settlers shot dead a Palestinian farmer.
The soldier, said to be in his twenties, was found unconscious at the bus stop on Thursday night, Israeli media said.
Police said they were investigating the scene to find clues about the possible attackers, who had fled the scene.
Officials have ordered police to beef up their presence and set up checkpoints at Arad’s entrances.
Israeli media said police were treating the incident as a possible attack by Palestinians.
The incident took place hours after Israeli settlers shot and killed a Palestinian farmer near a village in the northern West Bank.
The Palestinian Maan news agency said the 48-year victim, identified as Mahmoud Zaal Oudah, was shot dead while working on his farm close to the Qasra village, located south of Nablus.
Three more Palestinians were injured on Thursday after Israeli aircraft attacked two locations in the Gaza Strip.
Daoud Shihab, the spokesperson of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad resistance movement, said the attack was an attempt to avert attention from the farmer’s death at the hands of Israeli settlers.
“The resistance has the right to respond to the occupation’s escalation in the Gaza Strip,” warned the official.
More than 300 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since October 2015, when Israeli forces stirred tension by introducing restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem al-Quds in August 2015.