Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian gunman who opened fire on an illegal Israeli checkpoint north of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, lightly wounding a guard, police said while a Palestinian armed group claimed the attack.
Israeli police said on Saturday a “suspect opened fire at the security forces operating at the (Qalandia) crossing”.
“The security forces operating at the crossing engaged the threat by returning fire and neutralised the terrorist. The death of the terrorist was later determined at the scene,” a police statement said.
Official Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the gunman as an 18-year-old from Kafr Aqab, the northernmost Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a Palestinian armed group, in a statement said “our heroic fighters… were able to directly target occupation soldiers at Qalandia checkpoint.”
The Qalandia checkpoint is used by the Israeli military to control Palestinian access to occupied East Jerusalem and Israel. Israel requires Palestinians to have permits to pass through the checkpoint to occupied East Jerusalem and Israel for work, medical care, education or for religious purposes.
According to Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, most of the Palestinians who use the checkpoint are residents of occupied East Jerusalem separated from the city by Israel’s separation wall, deemed to violate international law by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2004.
Israel’s deadly raid on Jenin
The shooting follows an escalation of violence in the occupied West Bank this week. On Monday, Israel conducted a military raid into the Jenin refugee camp, killing at least seven Palestinians, including children, and wounding at least 91 Palestinians, according to a UN statement.
Israeli military forces stormed the camp, firing live ammunition, stun grenades and toxic gas, according to the Wafa news agency. Combat helicopters were used for the first time in decades after hours-long fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed fighters.
Israel claimed the raid was to arrest two wanted Palestinian resistance fighters.
Mohammed Kamanji, a lawyer and field researcher with the Independent Commission for Human Rights, said the latest attack was one of the largest Israeli military incursions into Jenin.
A day after the deadly raid on the refugee camp, Palestinian gunmen killed four Israeli settlers at a petrol station between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Nablus.
On Wednesday Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli military, carried out a brutal attack on the Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya in the central occupied West Bank, murdering one Palestinian and wounding dozens of others and burning 30 houses, 60 cars, and dozens of olive trees.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, urged Israel on Friday to stop the violence.
“This week’s violence in the occupied West Bank risks spiralling out of control, fuelled by strident political rhetoric, and an escalation in the use of advanced military weaponry by Israel,” Turk said in a statement.
He added that the Israeli military’s raid on the Jenin refugee camp was a “major intensification of the use of weaponry more generally associated with the conduct of armed hostilities, rather than a law enforcement situation”.
So far this year, Israeli military raids into occupied Palestinian territory have killed at least 175 Palestinians. Palestinian gunmen have killed 25 Israelis.
Source: TRTworld.com