Pipe bomb thrown at IDF soldiers in northern West Bank; no injuries

A man threw a pipe bomb at Israeli soldiers outside the village of Yabad in the northern West Bank, the army said Wednesday.

No troops were injured in the incident.

Israel Defense Forces soldiers opened fire at the assailant, who fled the scene. The military said it launched a search for the attacker.

The incident came a week after a Palestinian man tried to ram a car into a group of IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians, also in the northern West Bank.

On Monday Israeli forces briefly held and questioned the wife of a Palestinian man suspected of carrying out a deadly terror attack earlier in December and set up roadblocks around his West Bank hometown of Kobar as the search for him continued, the Shin Bet security service said at the time.

Also Monday, the Israeli military released statistics for 2018 showing that the number of Palestinian terror attacks in the West Bank had dropped for the fourth consecutive year.

In the past year, the army documented 87 “terror events,” 10 fewer than the 97 recorded in 2017. It was a steep decline from the 169 in 2016 and 219 terror attacks in 2015.

The IDF also considers attacks on soldiers, not just civilians, to be terror attacks.