Knife attack on West Bank bus ends with one wounded and Palestinian assailant killed

Israeli security forces in Jerusalem on March 31, 2022 – AFP

A Palestinian stabbed a passenger on a bus in the southern occupied West Bank on Thursday (31) before he was killed by an armed civilian, the Israeli army and Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.

“A terrorist stabbed a passenger on a bus near the Elazar colony. The passenger was injured and is being treated at a hospital. A civilian who was on the bus shot and killed the terrorist,” the army said in a statement.

The seriously injured passenger, a man in his 30s, was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaarei Tsedek hospital and is undergoing surgery, the medical center said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the attacker as 30-year-old Nidal Juma Jaafra.

A few hours earlier, two Palestinians had died in an Israeli army operation in the northern occupied West Bank, according to the ministry.

The two Palestinians, aged 17 and 23, died in “actions by the Israeli occupation forces in the Jenin area”, the ministry said.

Since Wednesday, Israeli forces have intensified operations in the occupied West Bank, after an attack on Tuesday left five dead in the streets of Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan, suburbs of Tel Aviv. It was the third fatal attack in a week.

The attacker on Tuesday was a young Palestinian from Yaabad, a town near Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Israel have all recorded anti-Israeli attacks since October 2015, most of them carried out by young Palestinians who are not members of any organization.

Despite a reduction in the number of attacks since then, violence and clashes have increased in the West Bank over the past year, according to recent data from the Israeli army and the UN.