A Palestinian drove his truck Thursday into a group of Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint between Israel and the occupied West Bank, killing one of them before being shot, Israeli officials said.
Violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has intensified in recent months.
An Israeli soldier, Maksym Molchanov, 20, from Ukraine, was killed and three others were injured in the attack, according to the army. A 15-year-old Palestinian man and a couple in a car were also injured when the driver of the truck rammed them as they fled, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross.
The assailant was a 41-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank with an Israeli work permit, senior police official Avi Biton said at the scene of the attack.
This, according to an Israeli defense official, took place on the Israeli side of the Maccabim military checkpoint, located between the city of Modiin (central Israel) and the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The Palestinian drove his vehicle into a group of off-duty soldiers, the official, who requested anonymity, added.
According to the Israeli police, “the driver of the truck fled but was neutralized near the checkpoint”, located not far from the Jewish settlement of Hashmonaim, west of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, in the West Bank.
The assailant, Daoud Abdelrazeq Fayez, was residing in the Deir Ammar refugee camp near Ramallah, a Palestinian security source told AFP.
The Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed his identity and death.
This new attack comes a few hours after the Israeli army reported four soldiers injured, one of them moderately, by an explosive device on a road where they secured the access of pilgrims going to a holy place of Judaism in Nablus, West Bank.
After the multiplication of attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gathered in the evening the main security officials, announced his office.
Already on Wednesday, a 14-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem stabbed a civilian with a knife at a light rail station in Jerusalem, before being shot dead by an Israeli policeman.
On the same day, the Israeli army said it had “neutralized” a Palestinian man who lightly injured a soldier in a car-ramming attack near a military position near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
The Palestinian movement Hamas, one of Israel’s pet peeves, hailed the attacks in a statement.
“This operation (with the ram-vehicle), in addition to the heroic one in Nablus, testifies to the capacity of the (Palestinian) resistance to go from defense to attack and to surprise the army of the (Israeli) occupation where she doesn’t expect it,” wrote Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Since the beginning of the year, violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 224 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian, according to an AFP count established from official sources.
This assessment includes, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians and three members of the Arab minority.
Apart from East Jerusalem occupied and annexed by Israel, nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank. About 490,000 Jewish settlers also live there in settlements considered by the UN to be illegal under international law.
08/31/2023 19:46:09 – Modiin (Israel) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
