Jew believed to be attacker shot, killed in Jerusalem
5 Israelis wounded in violence Wednesday as 2 attackers shot dead, 1 critically wounded; 15-year-old armed with knife shot, wounded by IDF fire near Yitzhar.
A Jewish man, who security forces mistook for a nationalistically-motivated attacker, was shot and killed in central Jerusalem late Wednesday night, concluding a day of continued violence - mostly in the West Bank.
Initial investigation by the IDF's criminal investigation division (CID) found that the Jewish man, who is believed to be a security guard, suspected that armed soldiers that boarded a bus were terrorists, and asked them for identification.
The soldiers, meanwhile, thought the Jewish man was a terrorist, claiming he attacked them and tried to grab one of their weapons. A physical altercation broke out between the soldiers and the man, which resulted in the man being shot by one of the soldiers.
According to the killed man's ID, he was a released IDF soldier who was studying at a yeshiva.
Earlier in the day, an Israeli female combat soldier in the IDF was stabbed in the neck and critically wounded near Binyamin, not far from Jerusalem, by one attacker.
Another female soldier shot the attacker dead and apprehended another individual who was later cleared of suspicion and released from police custody.
The surrounding area was closed off for fears that the terrorist's body was booby-trapped with explosives.
A preliminary investigation revealed that after one terrorist stabbed the critically wounded victim, he ran towards the soldier, still brandishing the knife, and she managed to shoot him from short range before he had the chance to stab her as well.
In a separate incident Wednesday evening, four IDF troops were wounded in a vehicular attack in Beit Umar, a West Bank town north of Hebron.
One was in moderate-to-serious condition while the rest were lightly wounded. The attacker was shot and critically wounded at the scene.
Hours earlier, in the morning, a 15-year-old Palestinian girl armed with a knife was shot by IDF forces as she tried to enter Yitzhar, a settlement near Nablus.
The troops provided medical assistance to the wounded would-be attacker.
The troops were called to the scene after the IDF received reports of a suspicious individual. During the incident, the local auxiliary force was deployed and residents were instructed to stay in their homes.
Samaria Regional Council Chairman, Yossi Dagan, described the incident as an escalation. "It has been a long time since there have been infiltrations of this type in Samaria communities," he noted.
The West Bank saw four separate attacks on Tuesday in which a soldier was killed and three others – two soldiers and a civilian – were wounded.
