Dubai: Israeli regime forces shot dead an alleged a knife-wielding assailant in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday and killed another alleged attacker in a car that rammed a bus stop near a Jews-only colony in the West Bank, occupation police and the army claimed.
The man killed at the heavily-patrolled Damascus Gate, the main entrance to Jerusalem’s walled Old City, was identified by regime police as a resident of Jordan. It was not immediately clear whether he held Jordanian nationality.
The occupation forces said in a statement that a car carrying two people rammed a civilian bus stop at a junction near the colony of Kiryat Arba, outside the town of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
“In the attack, three civilians were injured. In response to the immediate threat, forces at the scene fired at the vehicle, resulting in the death of one of the assailants while the others were wounded,” the statement said.
Palestinians often cast doubt on the occupation authorities’ justification of their shooting of Palestinians. Video footage has surfaced more than once contradicting the regime’s narrative, including one that appears to show evidence being planted, and another that shows the Palestinian victim posing no threat to occupying soldiers.
At least 213 Palestinians have died in violent incidents since October in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — 141 of them identified by occupation authorities as “assailants”, others killed by Israel during clashes and protests.
Palestinians, many of them acting alone and with rudimentary weapons, have killed at least 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans in attacks that have waned in recent months.
Earlier in the day, a Palestinian who was shot during an Israeli army raid on Thursday near Hebron, died of his wounds, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said occupation troops fired at him while he was fleeing arrest.
The regime’s police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said the assailant in Jerusalem “was running towards police officers with a knife in his hand and was shot and killed”.
He said another knife was found in his possession and that no police officers had been hurt.
Palestinian leaders say assailants have acted out of desperation over the collapse of peace talks in 2014 and Israeli colony expansion in occupied territory that Palestinians seek for an independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
— With inputs from Reuters
