Two Palestinian terrorists were shot and killed Saturday after attempting to ram IDF soldiers at a checkpoint in Hebron, the military said. An Israeli man was lightly wounded.
According to the IDF, the attackers accelerated their vehicle toward 202nd Battalion paratroopers operating at the Hashoter checkpoint. Soldiers opened fire, killing both assailants.
Site of terror attack in Hebron
The incident came days after a string of attacks in the West Bank. On Tuesday, a Palestinian man stabbed two 20-year-old soldiers near the settlement of Ateret in the Binyamin region. The soldiers suffered minor wounds before troops from the Paratroopers Brigade’s 101st Battalion shot and killed the attacker. The military said he had been stopped for questioning after security cameras and a civilian report identified suspicious movement from the nearby village of Beit Rima. Following the attack, the army imposed a closure on the Arura area and set up roadblocks in surrounding villages.
The stabbing was the second assault in the West Bank within 10 hours. Earlier that day, a Palestinian driver who had rammed a female soldier near the Kiryat Arba bypass junction fled the scene and attempted another ramming attack near Hebron. Troops from the 202nd Battalion opened fire and killed him. The female soldier sustained minor injuries.
Last week, a separate incident heightened tensions when an iron rod was thrown at a car traveling on Highway 5 near the Palestinian village of Mas-ha, shattering the windshield. The driver, a resident of Ramat Gan, was treated for shock. Merav Ben-Avraham, 23, who was in the passenger seat, told ynet that she and the driver initially believed they were under attack. “Three minutes before the checkpoint, we heard a boom,” she said. “We saw the rod in the car, panicked, and thought it was a terror attack.”
The surge in attacks comes as Israeli forces continue a broad security operation across clusters of West Bank villages.