Stabbing attempt thwarted in northern West Bank

A Palestinian woman was shot Tuesday morning as she tried to stab an IDF officer at a checkpoint adjacent to the Einav settlement in the northern West Bank, the army said.

The officer responded with fire in her direction and she was killed. There were no injuries to IDF troops.

The attacker was later identified as Maram Ramiz Hassouna, 19, from Nablus, Palestinian media reported.

The incident came some two hours after an attempted stabbing at the Gush Etzion Junction, just south of Jerusalem. Soldiers shot dead a knife-wielding attacker who approached people waiting at a hitchhiking stop, the army said.

One Israeli man was injured by shrapnel from the bullets directed at the attacker, police and the army said. The Magen David Adom first-aid service said paramedics arrived at the scene and treated the Israeli man, said to be in his 40s, who was suffering from light injuries to his hand. They then evacuated him to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem.

The attacker was later identified as Mahmoud El-Khatib, 16, from the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Fajjar.

Several minutes after the incident at the Gush Etzion Junction, an Israeli man was stabbed in Jerusalem’s Beit Yisrael neighborhood. Although the man claimed to have been stabbed by an Arab, police later dispelled the notion that it was a terror attack.

Meanwhile, security forces received reports of a Palestinian woman carrying a knife at the Efrat Junction in Gush Etzion. She was arrested by soldiers who arrived at the scene.

A recent rash of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank has killed more than 20 people since the beginning of October. Over 80 percent of the perpetrators have come from the West Bank.

Some 100 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom were targeted while they were allegedly attacking Israelis. Others were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.