IDF soldier killed as Palestinian tanker rams West Bank bus stop
Footage shows truck careening full speed into guard post near recently legalized Givat Assaf settlement; 7 Palestinians said killed in separate airstrikes on Tubas and Tulkarem
An Israeli soldier was run over and killed Wednesday at a West Bank bus stop in an apparent attack by the driver of a fuel tanker, reinforcing worries that violence in the territory could continue to heat up.
The incident, outside an Israeli settlement near Ramallah, came as security officials have reportedly sought to beef up anti-terror activity in the West Bank, and hours after Palestinians reported that five people had been killed in an Israel Defense Forces drone strike in a town in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley.
Footage from the scene of the attack showed a truck with Palestinian license plates veer off a busy highway and barrel full speed into an IDF guard post adjacent to a bus stop before coming to a halt.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said it treated an Israeli man in his 20s who suffered critical injuries in the attack. He was pronounced dead at the scene and later identified by the military as a soldier.
He was named by the IDF as Staff Sgt. Geri Gideon Hanghal, 24, of the Kfir Brigade’s Nahshon Battalion, from the northern city of Nof Hagalil.
The assailant was shot at the scene by soldiers and an armed civilian, the IDF said, describing the incident as terrorism. Forces deployed to the scene were setting up roadblocks, the army added.
The apparent assault occurred on Route 60 outside Givat Assaf, a former wildcat outpost that the government retroactively legalized in late June, though the settlement’s homes remain unauthorized amid claims that they were placed on private Palestinian land.
The suspect was named by Israeli security sources as 58-year-old Hayil Dhaifallah, from the central West Bank town of Rafat. His condition was not immediately clear, the Palestinian Authority’s official mouthpiece Wafa reported.
The IDF later operated at the assailant’s home to measure it for potential demolition.
The apparent attack was the latest to raise fears of a drastic resurgence in violence in the West Bank, after a series of attempted suicide bombings claimed by Hamas in recent weeks as well as a shooting attack on the Jordanian border Sunday that killed three Israelis.
According to Israeli authorities, 33 people including Israeli security personnel have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank since October 7, when the war against Hamas in Gaza started with the terror group’s massacre in southern Israel. Another six members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank over that period.
Much of the violence over the past month has taken part in areas of the West Bank outside the northern third of the territory where the IDF has concentrated anti-terror efforts in recent years, including a major 10-day operation in refugee camps connected to Jenin, Tulkarem and the Jordan Valley town of Tubas that ended Saturday.
The Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank said Wednesday that five Palestinians were killed in an airstrike in Tubas overnight. Another two people were injured by Israeli fire, one critically, as troops raided Tubas and the neighboring town of Tammun, Wafa reported.
An IDF spokesperson confirmed carrying out an airstrike, saying it targeted members of a terror cell.
The military later confirmed a separate drone strike in Tulkarem, but did not immediately provide further details. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported two Palestinians were killed in the strike.
Palestinian authorities did not say whether those killed or injured by Israeli fire were civilians or members of armed groups.
Once a rare occurrence, the IDF has carried out more than 70 airstrikes in the West Bank since October 7, using drones, attack helicopters, and fighter jets.
A report earlier this week suggested that defense brass were increasingly worried that the violence in the West Bank could swell into a major conflagration, with the military already stretched by intense fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Lebanese terror group Hezbollah on the northern border.
According to Channel 12 news, the heads of various security agencies told the cabinet Sunday that Israel “must do everything to avoid another front,” warning that “what is happening in the West Bank could blow up in all of our faces.”
Israeli officials have previously said that the violence is being helped along by Iran-backed groups smuggling weapons into the West Bank from Jordan and encouraging attacks.
Hardline Israeli settlers in the central and northern West Bank have also appeared to step up attacks on Palestinians in recent weeks, including a fiery rampage on a village last month in which a Palestinian man was killed while trying to confront the rioters.
On Wednesday, the Yesh Din organization said extremist youths burned and cut down dozens of olive trees belonging to a Palestinian farmer from the village of Burin in the northern West Bank.
Video footage shared by Yesh Din, an Israeli group that campaigns against settler violence, showed masked individuals holding chainsaws and wearing religious Jewish garb leaving an olive grove as fires burn by several trees.
The group was later seen walking toward a yeshiva in Yitzhar, a settlement with a long history of extremism southwest of Burin.
According to the PA health ministry, more than 670 West Bank Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since October 7. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
Troops have arrested some 5,000 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank over the same time period, including more than 2,000 affiliated with Hamas.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
