Arab News | Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian accused of West Bank ramming

BANI NAIM: Israeli forces killed one Palestinian and injured two others in the occupied West Bank on Monday, Palestinian authorities said, while the military said troops fired at a car that had hit an army vehicle.

AFP photos from the scene in Bani Naim near the southern city of Hebron showed a blue body bag laid out on the road next to a car with bullet holes in the windows.

The military said a “vehicle carrying three suspects… accelerated toward an IDF vehicle and hit it” in the area of Bani Naim.

In a statement, it said no injuries were reported among Israeli forces and that soldiers “responded by firing toward the vehicle, and hits were identified.”

The Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs said “Israeli forces opened fire on a civilian vehicle” at the entrance to Bani Naim, without giving details on whether those inside had been attempting to ram soldiers.

It said that 38-year-old Hossam Alaa Al-Din Abdul Jabbar Walid Ali was killed and two young men were “seriously injured by Israeli occupation forces’ gunfire”.

In a separate incident in the area of Ramun, near Ramallah, the Israeli military said it had dispatched troops “following a report of a vehicle set on fire and two terrorists in the area, one armed with a knife”.

The person with the knife “was neutralised by an Israeli civilian,” the military said, without specifying what neutralised meant.

The Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs said that Ahmad Mazen Kahla was “critically injured by Israeli occupation forces’ gunfire” in the area.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence there has surged since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank in settlements illegal under international law.

According to an AFP tally based on data from the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli forces or settlers have killed 1,113 Palestinians in the territory since the start of the Gaza war.

Israeli figures show at least 49 Israelis, including civilians and security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations during the same period.