BICOM

A Palestinian man last night wounded an Israeli Border Police officer before being shot dead in an incident at the Tapuah Junction in the West Bank.

The man reportedly approached Israeli security forces manning a checkpoint around midnight before opening fire with a hand gun. A Border Police officer was lightly wounded in the leg and subsequently transported to hospital in Petach Tikva.

According to IDF spokesman Peter Lerner, the assailant fired six rounds before IDF and Border Police personnel returned fire, killing the attacker at the scene. The identity of the assailant has not yet been made public. Additional forces were then deployed to the junction before IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz arrived on the scene to talk to soldiers there and assess the incident.

Last night’s attack comes just several days after Israeli forces prevented a suicide bombing at the same location. On Friday, a 20-year-old Palestinian man from Nablus approached the Tapuah Junction wearing suspiciously heavy clothing during a hot day. When asked to stop and subsequently searched, he was revealed to be wearing an explosive belt comprised of 12 pipe bombs. The explosives were neutralised and the man arrested. However, it remains unclear whether he intended to detonate the explosives at the junction or to carry out an attack elsewhere.

The incidents come against the backdrop of uncertainty over the future of Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation in the West Bank. The new Palestinian unity government, sworn in yesterday, is backed both by the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas. PA forces have in recent years coordinated closely with the IDF, often thwarting the violent activities of Hamas in the West Bank. However, with Hamas now backing the new Palestinian government, such cooperation has been thrown into doubt. It is unclear if Fatah has made any assurances to Hamas that would curb such counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank.