RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: A Palestinian shot dead two Israeli soldiers at a bus stop in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the military said, with the army locking down the city of Ramallah amid a manhunt.
The attack came hours after security forces killed two Palestinians, with fears of wider unrest. In another incident, a Palestinian stabbed two Israeli border police in Jerusalem´s Old City before being shot dead, in the bloodiest 24 hours to hit the West Bank and Jerusalem in months. The Israeli army said a Palestinian exited his car at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement in the West Bank before opening fire on soldiers and civilians.
Two soldiers were killed and at least two other people, including another soldier, were wounded, the army said, with the attacker fleeing. An AFP photographer saw two men who appeared to be soldiers lying on the ground, before their bodies were covered up. "We are searching for the terrorist. We will find him," the military said on Twitter.
Following the attack, the army circled the nearby city of Ramallah, home to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. Entrances and exits to the city were sealed and the army entered multiple neighbourhoods, AFP correspondents said. Clashes broke out in multiple spots. The shooting came only hours after Israeli forces killed two Palestinians allegedly responsible for West Bank attacks that claimed the lives of three Israelis, including a baby.
The armed wing of Palestinian movement Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel in Gaza since 2008, claimed the two Palestinians as its "fighters." One of them was Salah Barghouti, a 29-year-old accused of shooting seven Israelis on Sunday, also at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement.
The Shin Bet Israeli internal security service said that other members of Barghouti´s group, all of them affiliated with Hamas, had been arrested overnight. A woman who was seven months pregnant was among those wounded in that attack. Doctors tried to save her baby boy with an emergency caesarean but he died on Wednesday and was laid to rest in Jerusalem.