WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A Zionist woman has died and a man has been seriously wounded in a retaliatory shooting on a car near the city of Al-Khalil in the southern occupied West Bank.
The military said in a statement that the pair, who were in their 40s, came under fire from a passing vehicle while driving.
The vehicle was hit by at least 22 rounds, with another three bullet impacts found nearby, according to the military’s initial investigation.
The military said it launched a manhunt and closed off a number of roads in the area. The military was questioning Palestinians entering and leaving Al-Khalil.
The occupying regime’s ambulance service said the woman was declared dead at the scene shortly afterward.
A 6-year-old girl, who was in the car during the attack, was unharmed.
Hebrew-language media outlets reported that the slain woman and her young daughter had hitched a ride with the Israeli man who was wounded in the attack.
The Gaza-based Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movements said the attack was a response to the occupying regime’s expanding settlement enterprise in the West Bank but stopped short of claiming responsibility.
Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for Hamas, stated that valiant Palestinian fighters, who effectively conduct acts of resistance in the northern and central parts of the West Bank, carried out a heroic operation in the southern part on Monday.
He said that the shooting is a natural response to the regime’s war on Palestinians’ sanctities as well as its illegal settlement expansion policies in Al-Quds and across the West Bank.
Qassem added that young Palestinian fighters can skillfully circumvent the regime’s security apparatus, despite a heightened state of alert in effect.
Palestinian resistance fighters carried out more than a dozen retaliatory operations across the occupied territories over the past 24 hours, according to a report.
The report by the independent Palestinian Mo’ta information center said three of the 19 retaliatory attacks were shooting operations and four involved throwing explosive devices at Israeli forces.
Seven separate cases of confrontations with Zionist troops were recorded in Al-Quds, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, Qalqilya, al-Khalil, and Tulkarm as well, it added.
It further said that Palestinian fighters opened fire at the al-Za’im checkpoint in occupied Al-Quds, hurled explosive devices at Zionist troops in the Qalandiya checkpoint, and threw firecrackers during confrontations in the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood in southern East al-Quds.

‘Dangerous, Volatile Vacuum’

The long-standing impasse in peace talks between the Zionist regime and Palestine is exacerbating an already dire situation, the UN warned Monday.
“The lack of progress towards a political horizon that addresses the core issues driving the conflict has left a dangerous and volatile vacuum,” Tor Wennesland, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Security Council.
“While we must urgently focus on addressing most critical issues, and on de-escalating the situation on the ground, we cannot ignore the need to restore a political horizon. The UN remains firmly committed to supporting the parties to achieve an end to the occupation, and the establishment of a two-state solution,” he added.