RAMALLAH (Dispatches) -- A settlement guard of the occupying regime of Israel was killed in a drive-by shooting late on Friday in the occupied West Bank.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene due to gunshot wounds, Israeli ambulance service Magen David Adom (MDA) said.
CCTV footage showed a car approaching a security booth near the entrance of Ariel settlement before two men stepped out and fired at two guards inside it, killing one of them. The other guard was unharmed, Israeli newspaper Haaretz said.
The shooters managed to flee the scene and the Zionist regime’s military said it launched a large manhunt in the area.
A lockdown was announced in Ariel settlement located in the central West Bank after the shooting.
Entrances to Salfit, the nearest Palestinian city to Ariel, have been closed, according to the Palestinian news website Arab48.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 200 settlements and outposts, deemed illegal under international law, across the West Bank and East Al-Quds.
Later in the night, a Palestinian man was fatally shot by Israeli troops during a raid in Azzun town near Qalqilya, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The man was identified as Yahya Ali Adwan, 27, who was a former prisoner.
There are no immediate links between Adwan’a martyrdom and the earlier incident in Ariel.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, one of the main groups present in the occupied West Bank, claimed responsibility for the operation.
“We claim responsibility for the heroic operation in the colony of Ariel in which a Zionist officer was killed, in response to violations committed by the occupation regime in Al-Quds,” the group said.
On its part, Hamas, the Palestinian movement that administers the Gaza Strip, hailed the attack as an “heroic operation”, with spokesman Hazem Qassem declaring it a response to the “attacks on Al-Aqsa,” Islam’s third holiest site, which has been one of the focal points for weeks of violence.
The Friday shooting comes nearly a month after 14 Zionists were killed in a series of shooting and stabbing attacks carried out by Palestinians from the West Bank and inside Occupied Palestine in retaliation for the occupying regime’s atrocities.
Israeli troops and police have been on high alert since, deploying additional military battalions to the West Bank and stepping up their operations in the occupied Palestinian territory.
At least 20 Palestinians were fatally shot by Zionist forces in April, bringing the total number of Palestinians in the West Bank martyred by Israeli forces this year to over 50.
Tensions have been heightened in recent weeks by an Israeli military