Young Israeli woman murdered in Gush Etzion stabbing attack
Earlier, Palestinian taxi driver tries to stab Israeli after failing to run over pedestrians near Jerusalem; 16-year-old Palestinian girl tries to stab Israelis near Itamar, run over by former head of Samaria regional council, and shot dead.
Hadar Buchris, a 21-year-old Israeli woman from Safed, was seriously wounded and later declared deceased after a stabbing attack at the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank on Sunday afternoon. IDF troops from the Kfir Brigade shot and killed her attacker.
The young woman suffered stab wounds to her head and was taken to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem in very serious, unstable condition where doctors were unable to save her life.
The attack happened at a hitchhiking station where two terrorists who tried to commit a stabbing attack were shot to death three weeks ago.
On Sunday morning, two stabbing terror attacks were thwarted in the West Bank when a 16-year-old Palestinian girl tried to stab Israelis near Itamar and a Palestinian taxi driver tried to stab an Israeli man after failing to run over pedestrians near Jerusalem. Both terrorists were shot dead, while an Israeli was lightly wounded.
A Palestinian taxi driver tried to run over Israelis at the Kfar Adumim junction near Jerusalem. When he was unsuccessful, he got out of the taxi and tried to stab an Israeli driver.
Shmuel Shapira, 51, from Eilat, was lightly wounded in his hand and taken to the Hadassah Medical Center at Jerusalem's Mount Scopus for treatment. Another civilian who was on the scene shot the terrorist dead.
The terrorist was identified as Shadi Hassib, 32, from al-Bireh near Ramallah.
Less than an hour before that, the former head of the Samaria regional council, Gershon Mesika, helped thwart a stabbing attack at the Samaria junction, at the southern entrance to Nablus in the West Bank.
Mesika, who saw a female terrorist trying to stab civilians at the entrance to the Samaria territorial brigade's military base, ran her over with his car.
"I was at the hitchhiking stop picking up passengers, when all of a sudden I saw a big woman chasing after another woman wielding a knife. I veered to the right and ran into her," Mesika told Ynet.
Another civilian, who was driving behind Mesika and noticed what was happening, exited his car and opened fire at her, along with IDF troops who were on the scene, shooting her dead.
She was identified as Ashraqat Qatanani, 16, from Nablus.
Following the foiled attack near Itamar, a Twitter page associated with Fatah posted a picture of Gershon Mesika with a target on his face, inciting to violence against him.
Some 300 settlers from Kiryat Arba, including young students, protested outside the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday morning, demanding more is done to improve the security situation.
They called on the government to close roads used by both Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, and slammed Bayit Yehudi ministers for not doing more for their voters.
"We are facing terrorism by individuals. This is not the terrorism of organisations, this is terrorism by individuals, sometimes with knives, incited mainly by social media," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of the cabinet meeting.
"It is very difficult to hermetically prevent the arrival of such knife-wielding, or other, terrorists to this or that place," he said, calling on citizens to be on high alert.
"I instructed the security agencies to coordinate their efforts in the Hebron district, from which most or all of the attacks are originating. We are carrying out – inter alia – arrests and roadblocks there and are boosting our forces. We did this in Jerusalem from which most of the attacks had originated," the prime minister continued.
The attacks on Sunday morning came a day after a Palestinian attacker stabbed four people in southern Israel. Following hours of an extensive manhunt, police forces found the 18-year-old Palestinian hiding late Saturday in the yard of a home close to where he carried out his stabbing spree in the southern town of Kiryat Gat.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
