Palestinian kills two Israelis during knife rampage in West Bank

INQUIRER.net PHOTO

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian who went on a knife rampage in the West Bank on Tuesday killed two Israelis near the entrance to an industrial park and tried to flee in a vehicle before Israeli security forces shot him dead, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.

Israeli medical services declared two people dead and said they were treating six others, according to an official statement.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed that an 18-year-old Palestinian man had been killed.

Last week, a 15-year-old Palestinian militant was killed during a firefight with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus and, in a separate incident, a Palestinian man succumbed to his wounds after Israeli forces fired at him near Jenin.

READ: Palestinians fire on bus with Israeli troops in West Bank, 6 hurt

According to a statement from the Israeli military, the suspect stabbed civilians at the entrance to Ariel Industrial Park, near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

He then stabbed other people at a nearby gas station, before fleeing in a vehicle which he crashed into other cars on a nearby highway, the military said.

After years of relative calm, violence in the West Bank has flared in recent months. Israeli forces have killed more than 100 Palestinians from there this year, most since late March when the Israeli army launched a crackdown on an ongoing wave of attacks by Palestinian militants which have killed at least 23 people in Israel and Israeli settlements in the last year.

READ: 30 Palestinians wounded as Israel mounts West Bank raid

Tensions in the West Bank have been exacerbated in recent months by the rapid expansion of Jewish settlements and an increase in Israeli army raids in cities in the Israeli-occupied territory.

Most world powers deem settlements built in the territory Israel seized in the 1967 war as illegal under international law and their expansion as an obstacle to peace, since they eat away at land the Palestinians claim for a future state.

Israeli officials blame the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited rule in the West Bank, for failing to control factions like the Iran-linked Islamic Jihad movement, target of 56-hour Israeli air strikes into Gaza in August.

The PA, deeply unpopular in the West Bank and under pressure from the more radical Hamas, says its hands are tied by Israel and it cannot prevent violence against Palestinians by settlers who enjoy army protection.