Palestinian man tries to stab Israeli soldiers in Hebron, is shot — IDF

A Palestinian man on Wednesday tried to stab Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in the southern West Bank city of Hebron and was shot by troops at the scene, according to the military.

The Israel Defense Forces said the assailant had been “neutralized,” without further elaborating. He was reported to be in moderate condition.

None of the soldiers were hurt.

The attempted stabbing followed a number of other recent attacks in the West Bank — including a drive-by shooting earlier this month that killed 19-year-old yeshiva student Yehuda Guetta and injured two others — and as intense fighting between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip dragged on for a third day.

The army on Tuesday said a would-be Palestinian gunman was killed and another was seriously injured after pulling a weapon on troops at Tapuah Junction, the site of the shooting that killed Guetta. But according to Army Radio, the incident was a case of mistaken identity and it remains unclear whether the Palestinians were armed. Both were members of Palestinian intelligence services, a Palestinian security source told AFP, without giving further details.

The Gaza-ruling Hamas and other terror organizations have fired over 1,050 rockets at Israel since the outbreak of fighting on Monday evening, killing at least six people in the Jewish state. The IDF has responded with hundreds of airstrikes aimed at Hamas personnel, weaponry and infrastructure throughout Gaza.

According to the Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry, 53 Palestinians have died since Monday night, including 14 minors, and 320 have been wounded. The IDF said more than half of those killed were members of terror groups involved in the fighting and that some, including several of the children, were killed by errant rockets fired from Gaza that fell short of the border and landed inside the Strip, not by Israeli strikes.