Two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank Friday, one of them by a settler, after a shooting hit Tel Aviv, as a surge of Israeli-Palestinian violence shows no letup.
Tensions remained high a day after Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin had, on a visit to Israel, called for de-escalation ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in March and the Jewish holiday of Passover in April.
But within hours of his appeal, a member of the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas opened fire outside a Tel Aviv cafe, wounding three men in their 30s before being shot dead by police.
“I heard gunshots and saw people running away,” David Friedmann, a police officer who helped shoot the assailant, told AFP, adding that he “ran towards” the scene.
“I fired three rounds at him, (a fellow officer) also fired three rounds, and when he fell, he was shot again so he wouldn’t get up again.”
On Friday morning, an Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian attacker at Dorot Illit settlement in the northern West Bank, the army said.
Occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, the West Bank is home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers who live in state-approved settlements considered illegal under international law.
“A terrorist armed with knives and explosive devices arrived at the Dorot Illit area” before the settler spotted the assailant, opened fire and “neutralised” him, the army said, later confirming he had been killed.
Read the article in The Daily Telegraph (AFP).