A woman was killed and a man seriously injured Monday in a shooting attack on their vehicle in the occupied West Bank, amid an outbreak of violence in the region.
Since early 2023, a series of attacks by Palestinians against Israeli targets, as well as violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, have been carried out.
This attack “was perpetrated against a vehicle on Route 60, near the city of Hebron, against civilians traveling in the area,” the Israeli army said in a statement reporting two injured civilians.
“The injured woman was later pronounced dead,” it added.
Local authorities identified the victim as Batsheva Nigri, a 40-year-old Israeli, primary school teacher and mother of three, from the settlement of Beit Hagai, south of Hebron.
One of his daughters was present in the car but was not injured, according to these sources.
She will be buried Monday evening at the Kfar Etzion cemetery in the West Bank.
The driver, aged 39 and seriously injured, was transported to Soroka hospital in Beersheva (south), said Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.
Without claiming responsibility for the attack, Hamas and Islamic Jihad hailed in a statement “a heroic act”, and called it a “normal response to the crimes of the occupation”.
– “We’ll catch the killers”?
The Israeli army announced that it had blocked the roads in the area and launched a search to find the “suspects” who fired on the vehicle.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the scene of the attack, said on television that “we will catch the murderers, as we have always done… They will pay for their crimes as well as those who are behind them.
Nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967. About 490,000 Jewish settlers also live there in settlements considered by the UN to be illegal under international law.
During clashes on Monday between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Beita, in the north of the occupied West Bank, six people were injured “by live ammunition”, also indicated the Palestinian Ministry of Health. One victim is in “critical condition” after being shot in the head, he added.
Later, eight Palestinians, including a journalist, were injured by Israeli forces near the fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, during a demonstration in support of “resistance in the West Bank”, according to the movement Islamist Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, two Israeli men, a 60-year-old father and his 28-year-old son, were shot dead at a car wash in the Palestinian town of Huwara, sparking a manhunt by Israeli forces for the assailant. .
In April, thousands of Israelis demonstrated on a hill to demand that the Israeli authorities legalize the settlement of Eviatar, near Beita.
At least 218 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the year in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as 31 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian, according to an AFP count compiled from official sources.
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.
08/21/2023 19:58:53 – Hebron (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
