Palestinian said to attack Israelis on West Bank road, is shot dead

A Palestinian man tried to stab Israelis on a West Bank road Wednesday morning and was shot by a civilian, the Israeli military said.

There were no Israeli casualties in the incident near the village of Hawara, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to the army.

The suspected terrorist was taken in a military ambulance in serious condition to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, where he was declared dead, according to a statement from the hospital. Sources in the Palestinian Authority Military Liaison’s Office identified him as Mohammed Abdel Fattah from the nearby town of Salfit.

Many troops arrived at the scene and began investigating the circumstances of the incident. Route 60, where the attempted attack took place, was temporarily closed to traffic.

The knife Fattah used in the attempted attack was recovered at the scene, the military said.

According to a statement from the Samaria Regional Council, the assailant attempted to open the door of a vehicle driven by an Israeli man and to stab his teenage daughter, whom he was driving to school. The father shot the attacker, the statement said.

The driver, Yehoshua Sherman, said the assailant blocked his car’s path with a knife in his hand.

“I went to work with my daughter and was driving from Elon Moreh to Tapuah,” he said. “A few meters before Bitot Junction, a terrorist jumped at my car and tried to open the door and hurt me and my daughter. I went outside and with the help of a driver who was behind me we neutralized the terrorist and thankfully we weren’t hurt.”

Last week, the IDF said a seven-year-old Israeli boy was lightly injured when shots were fired at the central West Bank settlement of Beit El from a nearby Palestinian village.

The week before, IDF soldier Gal Keidan and civilian Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger were killed in a combined stabbing and shooting terror attack in the northern West Bank.