Israeli military forces have shot dead a Palestinian man after he allegedly stabbed several Israeli settlers in the central part of the West Bank as tensions have been rising across the occupied territories in recent weeks.
Palestinian sources, citing Israeli media outlets, reported that eight people were injured in the attack at the Beit Sira checkpoint, located 22 kilometers (13 miles) southwest of Ramallah.
#Breaking: "8 colonial Israeli settlers were reportedly injured in an alleged stabbing operation near an Israeli military checkpoint southwest of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, according to Hebrew sources." pic.twitter.com/41TJKb4VTw
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) September 22, 2022
The alleged Palestinian assailant, whose identity is not yet known, has been fatally shot, the Zaka emergency service said.
Earlier in the day, an Israeli soldier was injured in a car-ramming attack near the town of Huwara in the northern West Bank.
Local sources said Israeli soldiers shot the attacker and severely wounded him.
بالفيديو والصور| إصابة جندي إسرائيلي بعمــليــــــة دهـــــس جنوب #نابلس واعتقال المنفذhttps://t.co/rddFisLBI4
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) September 22, 2022
The developments came a week after the Israeli army killed a Palestinian teenager during a raid near the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the youth at the time as 17-year-old Odai Trad Salah, and said he was shot in the head in the village of Kufr Dan on the western outskirts of Jenin.
On September 12, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh warned that the intensified Israeli military crackdown in the occupied territories will inevitably push the West Bank to the verge of a major explosion, arguing that Israeli factions are fueling the violence for the sake of their own political interests.
Israel is hiding behind the absence of a political horizon and the world’s preoccupation with the fallout of the Ukraine conflict. The legislative elections, which will be held on November 1, cannot cover up the Israeli regime’s crimes, Shtayyeh said at the opening of a weekly cabinet session in the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
He called on the international community to wake up and look at what Israel is doing to the “oppressed and occupied” Palestinian nation.
Israeli forces continue their near-daily raid-and-arrest operations in various parts of the West Bank, wounding or killing Palestinians.
Such raids are carried out while Israeli settlers also conduct acts of violence against Palestinians and their property.
More than 70 Palestinians, including 37 Palestinian children, have been killed so far this year, many as a result of the use of lethal force by the Israeli authorities in a manner described by the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Territories as a violation of international human rights law.