Palestinian kills 2 Israelis, wounds 4 in West Bank stabbing

A Palestinian killed two Israelis and wounded four others in an attack in a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday before he was shot and killed by Israeli security personnel, Israeli paramedics and Palestinian officials said.

The Magen David Adom paramedic service confirmed the two were killed in the settlement of Ariel. The four wounded were hospitalized in serious condition.

It was the latest attack in a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence this year that has seen Palestinian attackers target Israeli civilians and near nightly Israeli arrest raids that have fueled unrest in the occupied territory.

The Israeli military said the Palestinian first attacked the Israelis at the entrance to the settlement’s industrial zone, then proceeded to a nearby gas station and stabbed more people there. The army said the man then stole a car, intentionally collided with a car on a nearby highway and struck another person, before fleeing the scene on foot.

It said the attacker was shot by a soldier, and that troops were searching the area for additional suspects.

Amateur video aired on Israeli television appeared to show the suspected attacker running down a highway and collapsing to the ground after he was shot. The Palestinian Health Ministry later confirmed that Mohammad Souf, 18, from the nearby village of Hares was the slain attacker.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Gaza’s rulers, the militant Hamas group, hailed Tuesday’s attack as “heroic.”

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid sent condolences to the families of those killed in the attack and said Israel was “fighting terror nonstop and full force.”

“Our security forces are working around the clock to protect Israeli citizens and harm terror infrastructure everywhere, all the time,” he said.

This year’s surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has killed at least 25 people on the Israeli side and more than 130 Palestinians, making 2022 the deadliest since 2006.

Israel says its almost nightly arrest raids in the West Bank — which began after Palestinian attacks killed 19 Israelis last spring — are needed to dismantle militant networks at a time when Palestinian security forces are unable or unwilling to do so.

The Palestinians say the raids undermine their security forces and are aimed at cementing Israel’s open-ended 55-year occupation of lands they want for their hoped-for state. Hundreds of Palestinians have been rounded up in such raids, with many placed in so-called administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold them without trial or charge.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state