Two people dead in stabbing, car-ramming attack in Israel

According to officials, a stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel left two people dead.

A Palestinian from the Israeli-occupied West Bank attacked and killed a man and a woman on Friday, according to Israeli police and emergency personnel. He was also wounded and shot.

A Palestinian man was praying on a roadside in the West Bank when an Israeli military reservist who had earlier opened fire on the area hit the victim.

The Israeli military said in a statement about the attack that “an armed individual ran over a Palestinian individual,” adding that the Israeli reservist’s military service had been terminated. After the attack, the Palestinian man returned home and had checks taken there.

A 68-year-old man was killed when the attacker’s vehicle crashed into people in Beit Shean, Israel’s northern city, on Friday, according to Israeli police, before speeding onto a highway.

After an intervention by a civilian bystander, the suspect fatally stabbed a 20-year-old woman near the highway, according to police, who later took the victim to a hospital.

According to Israel’s rescue services, paramedics performed the murders of both victims at the scene. Bystanders reported that a teenage boy received minor injuries as a result of the car-ramming.

According to the Israeli military, the attacker “infiltrated into Israeli territory several days ago.”

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died there since Israel’s genocidal war broke out in October 2023.

Israeli forces carry out regular raids and arrests in the West Bank, but Israeli settlers have also escalating violence there, seizing Palestinian land and harassing civilians.

Since October 7, 2023, more than 1, 000 Palestinians have died in the West Bank, mostly as a result of settler violence and security forces, according to the UN.

In the same time, 57 Israelis were killed in Israeli attacks.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed that he had given the military a directive to retaliate forcefully in the West Bank town of Qabatiya after the incident on Friday. Katz claimed the assailant claimed to have been a Palestinian.