A Palestinian gunman was shot dead by Israeli troops after opening fire at them in the northern West Bank overnight Thursday.
The military said that the force entered the town of al-Bireh after spotting several suspicious characters approaching the settlement of Psagot when the attacker opened fire at them from a passing vehicle.
Soldiers returned fire, hitting the assailant. The Palestinian health ministry later reported his death.
A riot erupted subsequently as dozens of Palestinians gathered around the unit. Troops dispersed the crowd using riot control measures.
The military further stated that the attacker, later identified as 26-year-old Muhammad Abbas, was wanted by Israel for taking an active part in terrorist acts.
This latest incident comes amid a surge in nationalist attacks of Palestinians against Jews which culminated last week with a fatal shooting near the West Bank outpost of Homesh in which 25-year-old yeshivah student Yehuda Dimentman was killed and two others wounded.
Dimentman's death was preceded by two stabbing attacks in Jerusalem: One involving a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who stabbed a Jewish woman in front of her children in East Jerusalem’s contested Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and another in which a 25-year-old Palestinian West Bank resident stabbed an ultra-Orthodox man near the capital's Damascus gate, moderately wounding him.
The attacks in Jerusalem came less than a fortnight after the murder of 26-year-old Eliyahu David Kay, who was shot and killed on the streets of Jerusalem by 42-year-old Fadi Abu Shkhaydam from the Shuafat refugee camp, who was later killed by nearby security forces.