WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A Palestinian slammed his car into a Zionist army officer near a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank Wednesday, seriously injuring him, the occupying regime’s military said. The officer opened fire on the man, the military said, and according to the Palestinians, he died soon after.
The Palestinians identified the suspected attacker as Habas Abdel Hafeez Yousef Rayan, 54.
The army said in a statement that the attacker arrived in a vehicle at the Maccabim checkpoint on a busy commuting route and struck an officer. The attacker left the vehicle and tried to attack the officer with an axe, the statement said. The officer fired at the man. The officer was injured, according to the army, and transferred to a hospital. Rush-hour traffic was backed up for miles as official cars lined the road, part of a link between the West Bank and Tel Aviv.
Days earlier, Zionist troops killed another Palestinian following a car-ramming operation that left five settlers injured near the city of Ariha in the occupied West Bank.
Hours after the Sunday attack, the Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as Barakat Moussa Odeh, 49, from the village of al-Ezariya, east of the occupied city of Al-Quds. It added that Odeh succumbed to the wounds he sustained from gunfire near the Nabi Moussa junction, south of Ariha.
More than 150 Palestinians have so far been killed this year during the Zionist regime’s brutal crackdown on West Bank’s native residents.
On Saturday, four Zionists and a Palestinian were injured in a gun attack near a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Khalil.
October has seen the highest number of Palestinians martyred by Zionist troops’ fire across the occupied West Bank, including East Al-Quds, in 2022 so far, according to data compiled by Middle East Eye.
Zionist troops killed at least 29 Palestinians in the West Bank last month, making October the deadliest month there so far in what the United Nations’ humanitarian office said on Tuesday was on course to be the “deadliest year” since it started counting fatalities across the Palestinian territories in 2005.
According to MEE’s analysis, it is also the highest death toll in the West Bank in a single month since May last year during nationwide Palestinian protests against the Zionist regime’s attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Sheikh Jarrah evictions and the bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
In another development, a Zionist court has approved a decision by regime authorities to demolish a school in a Palestinian village near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Ma’an news agency reported on Tuesday.
This came as a number of Palestinian residents of the village of Ein Samiya had appealed against a previous order by the regime’s district court in Al-Quds that stipulated the immediate demolition of the only school in the village.