A Palestinian stabbed a passenger on a bus in the occupied southern West Bank on Thursday, seriously injuring him, before being shot dead by another passenger, the Israeli military said.
A terrorist attack
“A terrorist stabbed a passenger on a bus near the settlement of Elazar. The passenger was injured and is being treated in a hospital. A civilian who was on the bus shot and killed the terrorist,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
The seriously injured passenger, a man in his mid-30s, was transferred to Shaarei Tsedek Hospital in Jerusalem where he entered an operating room, the medical center said. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the assailant as 30-year-old Nidal Juma Jaafra.
An Israeli army raid
On Thursday morning, at least two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army raid in the northern occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said. Other officials also reported serious injuries.
Israeli forces have been stepping up operations since Wednesday in the occupied West Bank after an attack that killed five people on Tuesday evening in the streets of Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan, towns on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. This is the third deadly attack in a week in the country. The perpetrator of Tuesday’s attack was a young Palestinian from Yaabad, a village near Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Violence on the rise
Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Israel have been the scene since October 2015 and for months of anti-Israeli attacks, most often committed by young isolated Palestinians. While the number of such attacks has since declined, violence and clashes have increased in the past year in the West Bank, according to recent data from the Israeli army and the UN.
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then, some 475,000 Jewish settlers have settled in the territory, living in settlements illegal under international law, alongside nearly 2.9 million of Palestinians.