JERUSALEM, June 24 — Israeli forces today killed a Palestinian who opened fire on a checkpoint north of Jerusalem, lightly wounding a guard, police said while a Palestinian fighters claimed the attack.
Israeli police said 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 Palestinian was later determined at the scene,” a police statement said.
The Qalandia checkpoint is the main gateway used by Palestinians between annexed east Jerusalem and Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa identified the person shot dead as Ishaq al-Ajluni, aged 17 or 18, from the Kufr Aqab neighbourhood just north of the checkpoint.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a Palestinian fighters, in a statement said “our heroic fighters... were able to directly target occupation (Israeli) soldiers at Qalandia checkpoint.”
The shooting follows a series of deaths in the West Bank this week, including four Israelis fatally shot in a Palestinian attack, and 10 Palestinians killed in an Israeli raid and subsequent drone strike.
Additionally, a 39-year-old man died today from his wounds after being “shot by the occupation (Israel) at dawn yesterday in Nablus” in the northern West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and its armed forces regularly carry out raids in Palestinian cities.
Israeli forces yesterday shot at “armed individuals” who fired at them in Nablus and used rubber bullets against people who “threw explosives and hurled stones at the soldiers”, the military said today.
So far this year, violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed at least 176 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian.
The tally compiled from official sources includes combatants as well as civilians and, on the Israeli side, three members of the Arab minority. — AFP