JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police on Saturday shot a Palestinian suspected of carrying out a stabbing attack in Jerusalem, and Palestinian officials said the teenager was critically wounded.
It was the latest in a wave of deadly violence in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank since the spring, making this year the deadliest since 2015.
Police said the Palestinian seriously wounded an Israeli pedestrian before fleeing to an east Jerusalem neighborhood. They said police identified the attacker and shot him when he turned toward an officer with an “object” in his hand. The statement did not say how police identified him, what kind of object he was holding or how close he was to the officer.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the alleged suspect was 16 years old and was seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire. It did not provide his name or further details. Israeli medics evacuated him to a Jerusalem hospital.
Separately, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 32-year-old man died at a hospital Saturday after being wounded by Israeli gunfire near a checkpoint in the northern West Bank.
Palestinian assailants have carried out a series of stabbings, shootings and car ramming attacks in east Jerusalem and the West Bank in recent years. While Israel says it uses deadly force only in life-threatening situations, Palestinians and human rights groups have accused Israeli security forces of using excessive force, and in some cases killing people uninvolved in violence.
The violence escalated in the spring with Israel intensifying nightly raids in the occupied West Bank to chase suspects involved in recent attacks. The raids often spark deadly clashes between the army and Palestinians.
More than 125 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year. The fighting has surged since a series of Palestinian attacks killed 19 people in Israel. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built more than 130 settlements there, many of which resemble small towns, with apartment blocks, shopping malls and industrial zones. The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the main part of their future state. Most countries view the settlements as a violation of international law.
