RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, during a raid that the Israeli military said elicited violent riots.
Early on Thursday, Israeli forces raided the home of a Palestinian they said carried out a car-ramming attack at a checkpoint near the city of Modiin on Wednesday, seriously wounding a soldier.
The 54-year-old man was shot dead at the site of the attack.
During the operation in the town of Beit Duqu, northwest of Jerusalem, soldiers responded with riot dispersal means and fired at Palestinians hurling rocks and petrol bombs, the military said in a statement, adding that “hits were identified”.
Violence has been on the rise in the West Bank, with near-daily army raids and clashes.
More than 100 Palestinians from the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces this year, in what the U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland said is set to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, when the United Nations began consistently tracking fatalities.
A string of deadly street attacks by Palestinians has killed 20 people in Israel and Israeli settlements, and four members of Israel’s security forces have also been killed this year.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Henriette Chacar; Editing by Robert Birsel)
