- Palestinian woman stabs soldiers and is killed – officials
- Second Palestinian woman shot dead in separate incident
- Violence follows deadly Arab attacks in Israel
- Israel conducts raids in the West Bank city of Jenin
- Israeli Jew tries to steal soldier’s gun, is shot dead
JERUSALEM, April 10 – Israeli forces killed two Palestinian women on Sunday after one ran towards troops and the other stabbed a soldier to death in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, Israeli security officials said.
Amid escalating violence after a series of deadly Arab attacks in Israel, a Palestinian was killed by Israeli soldiers in stone-throwing confrontations near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The Israeli military said troops fired on a Palestinian who threw petrol bombs at an Israeli vehicle.
The bloodshed coincided with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when Israeli-Palestinian violence has erupted in the past and escalated into an 11-day war between Gaza militants and Israel last May.
In Bethlehem, no weapon was found on the body of a Palestinian woman who was shot dead after she ignored soldiers’ calls and warned fire to stop running towards her, the Israeli military said, adding it had launched an investigation.
People carry the body of Palestinian woman Ghada Sabatin, who was killed by Israeli forces according to medics, during her funeral in Husan in the Israeli-occupied West Bank April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma
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Hours later, a Palestinian woman armed with a knife was shot dead after slightly wounding a paramilitary border police officer in Hebron outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which Muslims call the al-Ibrahimi Mosque, Israeli security officials said.
Israeli forces are on high alert after attacks by three members of Israel’s Arab minority and two West Bank Palestinians that have killed 14 people in Israel since late March.
More than 20 Palestinians, many of them armed militants, have been killed by Israeli forces since January, while Palestinians have reported a surge in violence at the hands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official, said Israel’s expansion of settlements on occupied land that Palestinians want for a state and visits by far-right Israelis to the compound of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque have led to an escalation.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Arab attackers “attempted to destroy us” and were “moved by hatred of Jews and the State of Israel.”
Israeli forces have been conducting raids in and around the West Bank city of Jenin, a militant stronghold, to try to thwart what Bennett has called “a new wave of terrorism.”
Reporting by Jeffrey Heller and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Edited by Andrew Cawthorne and Alex Richardson