Soldier wounded in stabbing attack in northern West Bank
Female assailant shot, critically injured at front gate of Mevo Dotan settlement; lightly hurt serviceman taken to hospital
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
A Palestinian woman stabbed an IDF soldier, lightly injuring him, as he guarded the gate of a northern West Bank settlement on Thursday morning, the army said.
The other soldiers on the scene shot the female assailant, critically wounding her.
The stabbing attack occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m., outside the Mevo Dotan settlement in the northern West Bank’s Samaria region, the army said.
Closed circuit video footage from the settlement shows the assailant walking calmly up to the front gate, before she goes out of frame. A few moments later, she can be seen running from the scene with one uniformed soldier and an armed off-duty soldier in pursuit.
The moment the assailant was shot does not appear in the footage.
The soldier, who is approximately 20 years old, was taken to Hadera’s Hillel Yaffe hospital for treatment, Magen David Adom said.
He suffered a stab wound to the upper body, medics said.
The assailant received first aid on the scene, before also being taken to Hillel Yaffe for treatment, the medics said.
She was not immediately identified. Israeli medics described her as being in her 20s, while Palestinian media said she was approximately 16 years old.
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Though a marked drop has been recorded by security officials in recent months, 42 Israelis, two Americans, a Briton, a Palestinian and an Eritrean national have been killed in the spate of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks that began over a year and a half ago.
Israeli officials have said that many of the attackers were driven by personal problems, with some saying afterwards that they tried to commit suicide by attacking a police officer or soldier.
According to AFP figures, some 250 Palestinians, two Jordanians and a Sudanese migrant have also been killed in the spate of attacks, most of them in the course of carrying out attacks, Israel says, and many of the others in clashes with troops in the West Bank and at the Gaza border, as well as in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks.
The spate of Palestinian attacks that began in October 2015 was dubbed the “lone wolf” intifada, as many of the attacks were carried out by individuals who were not connected to any terror group.
