A Palestinian terrorist opened fire near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba on Saturday night resulting in the death of one Israeli man and the wounding of four others, one of them seriously, before being rammed by a car and shot dead by an off-duty soldier.
Israeli media reports say the initial shots were directed at a Jewish father and son who had been shopping at a Palestinian-owned convenience store between Kiryat Arba and Hebron.
According to Israel’s Magen David Adom medical team, the father, Ronen Hanania, was critically injured and later pronounced dead at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital.
The seriously injured man, now in stable condition, is MDA medic Ofer Ohana, who according to reports arrived on the scene to assist the other victims, which included two Israelis aged 19 and 49 and one Palestinian man, all of whom sustained minor injuries.
MDA medic Yisrael Lior said: “While I was running to get medical equipment, I heard the medic I was with shout: “I’m injured, they shot me,”
“We took cover, and while I was providing treatment to the medic I was with, we called for additional forces.”
A security officer nearby reached the scene shortly after and rammed the gunman with his car, before an off-duty soldier shot the assailant.
The assailant was Muhammad Kamal al-Jabari, a member of Aswad al-Haq, a group reportedly created last week and claiming to be affiliated with Hamas’s military wing, al-Qassam Brigades.
His brother Waal had been serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison but was freed and deported to the Gaza Strip as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner swap.
The off-duty IDF officer who neutralised al-Jabari lived in the vicinity of the terror attack and arrived on the scene after hearing gunshots.
The attack occurred near the entrance to Giv’at HaAvot, a Jewish settlement neighbourhood in Hebron just west of the larger Kiryat Arba settlement.
In footage shared on social media, gunshots could be heard in the area.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid vowed to take action against any others found to be involved in the terror attack, and deployed reinforcements to the area.
In a statement, Lapid said: “Terror won’t defeat us, we’ll act with a strong hand.”
Lapid added that he was praying for the wounded and hailed Israeli forces who neutralised the Palestinian assailant.
Several hours after the incident, Israeli troops were shot at by a passing vehicle near the Palestinian town of Bani Na’im, the IDF reports. Soldiers fired back at the gunman, who fled by car. There were no casualties.
The shootings come amid heightened tensions in the West Bank as gunmen, mostly members of Lion’s Den, have repeatedly targeted military posts operating along the West Bank security barrier.
An anti-terror offensive was launched earlier this year following a series of Palestinian attacks that killed 19 people. The offensive, focusing on the northern West Bank, has led to over 2000 arrests and over 125 Palestinian deaths, many of which - but not all - occurred during armed clashes with security forces. Four IDF soldiers have been killed in the West Bank during the recent operations.
