Israeli soldier lightly hurt in stabbing attack in Huwara; female assailant shot dead
IDF says serviceman pushes attacker back after being stabbed in shoulder in flashpoint northern West Bank town, before opening fire
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
An Israeli soldier was lightly hurt in a stabbing attack in the West Bank town of Huwara on Thursday, the military and medics said.
According to the Magen David Adom ambulance service, the soldier in his 20s was treated at the scene for a stab wound to his shoulder, and taken to Beilinson Hospital in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikvah.
The Israel Defense Forces said the wounded soldier managed to push the female Palestinian attacker away, before he and a soldier stationed with him in the Palestinian town shot her.
The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry said the woman was taken in critical condition to Rafidia Hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, where she was later declared dead. The ministry named her as 26-year-old Eman Ziyad Ahmed Odeh.
Huwara has long been a flashpoint in the West Bank as it is just about the only Palestinian town that Israelis regularly travel through in order to reach settlements. There are plans to build a bypass road for settlers to avoid having to travel through the town, but the construction work has been stalled.
There have been several shooting attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers in the town in recent months, including the killing of two brothers in February.
The attack on Thursday came hours after Israeli security forces killed three Palestinian gunmen in nearby Nablus. Two of the men were accused of killing Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina in a shooting attack in the Jordan Valley last month.
Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have been high for the past year, with the Israeli military conducting near-nightly raids in the West Bank amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
Palestinian attackers in Israel and the West Bank have killed 19 people since the beginning of the year and left several more seriously hurt.
At least 100 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the year, most of them while carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under circumstances that are being investigated.
The Times of Israel Community.