Israeli lightly hurt in stabbing at Etzion Junction

One Israeli was injured Tuesday morning in a stabbing incident at the Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem, the army said.

Soldiers shot dead the knife-wielding attacker, who approached people waiting at a hitchhiking stop, the army said.

The Israeli man was injured by the gun fire directed at the attacker, police and the army said.

The Magen David Adom first-aid service said paramedics arrived at the scene and treated a man, said to be in his 40s, who was suffering from light injuries to his hand.

They then evacuated him the 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.

The Gush Etzion Junction has been hit hard in the recent wave of stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks that have swept Israel and the West Bank over the past two months.

Last week Hadar Buchris, 21, was killed in a stabbing attack at the junction. The terrorist was shot and killed by security forces at the scene.

Days earlier, a Palestinian man opened fire from a moving vehicle at the site, killing three people: an Israeli man, an American yeshiva student, and a Palestinian man.

Several other stabbings and attempted stabbings have occurred at the junction in the last month.

Several minutes after Tuesday’s incident at the Gush Etzion Junction, an Israeli man was lightly injured in a separate stabbing incident in Jerusalem’s Beit Yisrael neighborhood.

The stabber was at large — the victim said he was an Arab man — and police said they were searching for him and looking into the motive for the attack. They later said it likely was not a terror attack.

The recent wave of Palestinian attacks has killed at least 22 Israelis since the beginning of October, including seven in the last week alone. Over 80 percent of the perpetrators have come from the West Bank.

Some 100 Palestinians have been killed, about half of whom were targeted while they were attacking Israelis.