Two Palestinian terrorists who opened fire from their car in the northern West Bank on Tuesday were shot and killed by the Israeli soldiers who were the intended targets.
The Israeli military said the men shot at an Israeli outpost near the settlement of Elon Moreh, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus. Israeli soldiers on patrol opened fire, killing the two alleged gunmen, AP reports.
Israeli security forces said they were searching for other terrorist assailants and found a pair of M-16 rifles and a pistol at the scene.
An Israeli soldier aims his weapon at a house, during a military operation, after the Israeli army forces killed Palestinian gunmen, near Elon Moreh, east of Nablus, in the West Bank. (Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Times of Israel reports troops of the 636th Combat Intelligence Collection Battalion ambushed the gunmen, a military source said. A third was reportedly wounded and fled toward the Nablus area.
No Israeli soldiers were hurt in the attempted attack, the IDF said.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the troops in a statement. “In their successful operation, the soldiers prevented an attack against Israeli civilians,” he said.
Tuesday’s deaths followed seven days of heightened violence in Israel and the West Bank.
Last week the Israeli military struck sites linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip after terrorists in the two territories fired salvos of rockets at Israel.
Two British-Israeli sisters and their mother were murdered when their car came under fire near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank last Friday, as Breitbart News reported.
The mother, Lucy Dee, succumbed to her wounds on Monday and was laid to rest in the settlement of Kfar Etzion south of Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Hundreds of mourners packed the funeral, singing and swaying as Lucy’s husband, Leo, and his remaining children wept at the podium — their family of seven reduced to four.
Mourners carry the body of Lucy Dee, 45, a British-Israeli woman who died of her injuries three days after a Palestinian terrorist attack, in which two of her daughters were also murdered, during her funeral at the Kfar Etzion settlement cemetery in the West Bank, on April 11, 2023. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty)
Last week, in a separate incident, an Italian tourist was killed and five others were wounded when a Palestinian’s car careened onto a bike path near the beach in Tel Aviv in what authorities described as a suspected terrorist attack.
Israelis continue to mourn as they prepare for the end of the Passover holiday, and ongoing attacks — both from Palestinian terrorists within Israel, and from Iranian proxies on Israel’s borders in Gaza and Lebanon.