Tensions in the Israeli capital. A female soldier was killed in an armed attack on Saturday evening in East Jerusalem. A few hours earlier, two Palestinian teenagers had died in an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, a sign of an upsurge in violence which “alarms” the UN.
The search for the main suspect continues while three Palestinians suspected of being involved have already been arrested according to the police. Soldier Noa Lazar, 18, who served in the military police, ‘died of serious injuries inflicted in an armed attack at Shuafat checkpoint’, a Palestinian refugee camp in East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel , the army said in a statement.
The UN is concerned
Another 30-year-old Israeli man was shot and seriously injured in the head in the attack and was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Two border police officers were slightly injured by “shrapnel”, according to the police. Security measures have been reinforced at the entry and exit points of East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector occupied by Israel since 1967, noted an AFP journalist.
“I am alarmed by the deterioration of the security situation, and the intensification of armed clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli security forces in the West Bank” and in East Jerusalem, commented on Saturday evening the UN envoy for the Near East, Tor Wennesland.
The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has called on the United States to “increase the pressure on Israel so that it ceases its total war against the Palestinian people”. Israeli operations “will lead to an explosion and a point of no return, which will have devastating consequences for all”, warned Nabil Abou Roudeina, spokesman for President Abbas.