Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who tried to stab one of them in the occupied West Bank yesterday, the military said.
The incident occurred at a bus stop along a main highway near the large Jewish settlement of Ariel.
“A Palestinian attempted to stab a soldier at the site. Our troops fired at him and he was killed. There were no casualties among our forces,” the military said in a statement.
There was no immediate Palestinian comment.
Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service said the fighter, whom it did not name, was a resident of the West Bank village of Biddya and had no record of anti-Israeli activity.
Biddya was the home village of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman who died of a head injury on Friday caused by what her husband said were rocks thrown at their car by Israeli settlers.
The Shin Bet statement, in its reference to Biddya, made no mention of Friday’s incident, which Israeli police are investigating.
Palestinians began a wave of knife and car ramming attacks in the West Bank and in Israel in 2015, after peace talks with Israel collapsed. Such incidents have become more sporadic.
Palestinians want the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, to be part of an independent state and most countries consider Jewish settlements built in the area to be illegal.
Meanwhile, clashes broke out in the occupied West Bank after Israeli forces ordered the closure of a Palestinian school, AFP correspondents said.
The Israeli army said the school had been the source of months of violence, with stones thrown at a nearby major road used by its forces and Israeli settlers.
The school serves the Palestinian villages of As-Sawiya and Al-Lubban south of Nablus and is located on a main road through the West Bank.
The Israeli army on Sunday issued an order for the school to be closed, but students tried to enter yesterday morning alongside some officials, AFP journalists said. Israeli soldiers and border police fired tear gas at protesters, including into the school premises.
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