Armed Palestinian killed by IDF fire during West Bank riots

One Palestinian was killed and another was seriously injured by Israeli fire as riots broke out near Hebron Tuesday afternoon.

The army shot and killed Imad Jawabreh, 22, near the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Arroub north of Hebron.

The army said soldiers opened fire at Jawabreh when he “aimed at them with an improvised weapon.”

The incident took place on a main road from Jerusalem to Hebron as some 200 Palestinians clashed with troops, the army said.

Jawabreh was taken to the hospital in critical condition but died from bullet wounds to his chest, medics said following.

Another protester was also injured in the clashes, according to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency.

In separate clashes south of Hebron, near the village of Dura, a Palestinian man was shot by Israeli forces and evacuated to a hospital in serious condition. Dura is near the Israeli settlement of Negohot.

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The clashes erupted when about 150 Palestinian demonstrators began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and vehicles.

The soldiers’ attempts to disperse the crowd using tear gas and rubber bullets failed, prompting the troops to open fire.

The IDF said it opened fire on the demonstrators after earlier attempts to disperse the crowd using tear gas and rubber bullets had failed.

The clash came as tensions in Israel and the West Bank continued to ramp up, with police bolstering efforts to quell a spike in attacks and riots from Arabs.

Tuesday morning also saw a number of anti-Arab attacks, likely as revenge for two fatal stabbing attacks on Jews a day earlier.

The Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported that dozens of cars in the West Bank town of Hawara had their windows smashed during a settler rally.

Palestinian West Bank resident Ghassan Daghlas said that dozens of Israeli settlers held a rally on the road south of Nablus and smashed the windshields of at least 30 cars.

Earlier Tuesday, police launched an investigation into a suspected “price tag” attack in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Beit Safafa, hours after an Arab cab driver was attacked by Jewish extremists in Jerusalem in the wake of two terror attacks a day earlier.

Police said Tuesday they had arrested four 13-year-old boys who admitted to throwing the rocks at the taxi driver.

Police and security forces fanned out in major cities and the West Bank in a bid to restore quiet after several days of unrest and a wave of violent attacks.

The stabbings came as a third straight day of violent protests rocked a number of Arab towns in the wake of the police shooting and killing a man in Kafr Kanna on Saturday.

Also Monday night, a Palestinian man was shot dead outside the Arab town of Zemer in the Sharon region close to the seam line, according to preliminary reports.

The man, a 36-year-old Nablus resident, was reportedly shot in an open field adjacent to the town. A 16-year-old Palestinian teenager was wounded in the incident.

Police said the shooting was criminally related, but a relative said the killing was nationalistically motivated, the Ynet news site reported.

AP contributed to this report