Palestinian shot dead after attempting to stab troops near Ramallah, IDF says

A Palestinian man was shot and killed after attempting to stab Israeli soldiers near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday evening, the military and Palestinian health officials said.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, the Palestinian suspect approached troops in a suspicious manner at a junction between the town of Baytin and the settlement of Beit El.

Soldiers first called on the suspect to identify himself, before he pulled out a knife, the IDF said. In response, the troops opened fire at him.

The suspect was initially taken by military medics to the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, but was declared dead.

The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry said it had been notified of the man’s death, naming him as 23-year-old Yazan Omar Jamil Khasib.

No soldiers were hurt in the attempted attack.

تغطية صحفية: "صورة الشاب يزن عمر جميل خصيب من بلدة قفين بطولكرم، والذي ارتقى برصاص جيش الاحتلال قرب حاجز بيت إيل شمال رام الله". pic.twitter.com/YEWQcS793v

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) March 17, 2023

The incident came as tensions were high in the West Bank.

For the past year, the IDF has been conducting near-nightly raids in the West Bank amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks. Those tensions have ramped up even further in recent weeks, featuring a cycle of deadly Israeli raids and Palestinian revenge attacks, as well as an uptick in settler violence.

Palestinian terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank in recent months have left 14 Israelis dead and several more seriously hurt.

At least 85 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.