Four Israeli police officers were injured in a vehicular attack at a checkpoint in central Israel, police said Wednesday, citing the death of the assailant. The 26-year-old man hit four police officers at a roadblock erected to control motorists in Kochav Yaïr, a town adjacent to the occupied West Bank, northeast of Tel Aviv, Israeli police said in a statement.
The police officers were hospitalized for minor injuries, according to this source.
The attacker tried to stab security guards
The assailant “then continued his way towards the Eliyahu crossing point (near the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya, editor’s note), where he attempted to stab security agents, who neutralized him,” added the statement. police, specifying that his death had been declared on the spot.
The incident occurs against a backdrop of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil on October 7. Some 1,160 people, most of them civilians, were killed in Israel, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Israeli military operations in retaliation have left more than 32,916 dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to the Ministry of Health of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement in power since 2007 in Gaza.