An Israeli was killed by a Palestinian gunman and four others injured, including a Palestinian, on Saturday in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli emergency services and army said.
The assailant, who opened fire near a checkpoint in Hebron, was killed by a security guard, the army said, adding that the soldiers were looking for possible accomplices.
Rescuers from Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, first reported that one of the 50-year-old Israelis was “unconscious, injured on the upper body”. A spokesperson for the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem later told Agence France-presse (AFP) that he had succumbed to his injuries.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the injured Palestinian was being treated at Hebron hospital. The other three Israeli wounded are more lightly affected.
Hebron, powder keg
Far-right Israeli MP Itamar Ben-Gvir, candidate on the list “Religious Zionism” to the legislative elections of 1er November, claimed his home in Hebron — a city home to a radical Jewish settler community — was the target of the attack. Israeli security forces have not confirmed the allegation and Israeli media, citing security sources, reported that Ben-Gvir’s home in a settlement in Hebron was not targeted.
Hebron is a powder keg where a thousand Jewish settlers live among 200,000 Palestinians. This attack comes a few days before the holding of new general elections in Israel, the fifth in less than four years, in a context of renewed violence in the West Bank, occupied since 1967.
About 474,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank in settlements considered illegal by most countries in the international community, among 2.9 million Palestinians.