2 Israeli Soldiers Killed In West Bank Shooting Attack
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two Israelis were killed and two seriously injured in a second shooting near a bus stop in the West Bank.
The attack on Thursday morning occurred at a bus stop outside of the Givat Asaf settlement, about a mile down the same road from the settlement of Ofra, where in an attack on Sunday night seven people were injured, including a pregnant woman whose prematurely delivered baby died on Wednesday.
In Thursday’s attack a gunman stopped his car next to the bus stop, got out of the car and began shooting. He fled the scene on foot.
Four people, all in their 20s, were shot in the attack. The two dead were later identified as soldiers. One of the injured is a man in critical condition with a gunshot wound to his head; he also was identified as a soldier. The injured woman is a civilian.
The attack came hours after Israeli troops shot a man in Ramallah suspected of involvement in Sunday’s attack near Ofra. The suspected attacker later died of his wounds.
Hamas praised Thursday’s deadly attack. “Hamas praises numerous resistance attacks as well as the citizens of the occupied West Bank and the revolutionary youth,” Hamas Spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou said in a statement, according to the Jerusalem Post. He said the attack “is in response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation in the occupied West Bank. Our members will stand against the occupation and will resist it – until it ends.”
The Fatah Party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas blamed the attack on Israel, referring to the deaths of three Palestinians alleged to have been involved in two separate West Bank attacks while being apprehended by Israeli soldiers.
“When the occupation army harms and destroys Palestinian land and Israeli soldiers execute three Palestinians in a kangaroo court, they have to understand that the Palestinian response will be in proportion to the aggression,” said Fatah spokesperson Munir Jaghoub.
On Thursday afternoon, a soldier was injured in an alleged car ramming attack outside of Ramallah at a bus stop near the West Bank settlement of Psagot. The driver was shot and killed.
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