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A Palestinian attacker opened fire on an Israeli military checkpoint in East Jerusalem, seriously injuring two people, hours after two Palestinian teenagers were killed in an Israeli military attack on the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities said.
It was the latest bloodshed in the region’s deadliest round of fighting in seven years.
It was less than 24 hours before Israel began celebrating the week-long Sukkot holiday, when thousands of Jews visited the holy city.
Saturday night’s shooting occurred at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.
The attackers shot and wounded a female soldier and a security guard, police said. Israeli rescue services said the woman was in critical condition and the man was in serious condition. A third Israeli suffered minor injuries.
Police said they were looking for the attacker, and special forces and a helicopter were involved in the search.
“Our thoughts are with the wounded and their families tonight,” Prime Minister Yar Rapid said. “Terrorism will not defeat us. We are also strong on this difficult night.”
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the region in an internationally unrecognized move.
It considers the entire city, including East Jerusalem, home to the city’s most important holy site, its capital. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Israel has carried out daily arrest raids in the occupied West Bank since a series of Palestinian attacks last spring killed 19 Israelis. Much of the military activity is concentrated in the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Nablus in the northern West Bank.
Earlier Saturday, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers in an arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp, where Israeli forces have repeatedly clashed with local gunmen and residents. The camp is known as a stronghold for Palestinian militants.
Soldiers entered the camp early Saturday and surrounded a house, Palestinian officials said. In the video circulating on social media, the sound of the exchange of fire can be heard. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported two deaths and 11 injuries, three of them critically.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the dead as 18-year-old Mahmoud al-Sous and 16-year-old Ahmad Daraghmeh.
The Israeli military said it had arrested a 25-year-old operative from the Islamic Jihad who was previously held by Israel. It said the man had recently been involved in a shooting attack on Israeli soldiers.
It said soldiers opened fire in the raid when dozens of Palestinians threw explosives and shot at them.
Just before noon, Israeli troops withdrew from the area.
The killings come a day after two Palestinian teenagers, 14 and 17, were killed by Israeli fire in separate incidents elsewhere in the occupied West Bank.
Human rights groups have accused the Israeli army of using excessive force in its dealings with Palestinians without being held accountable. The Israeli military said it would only fire in life-threatening situations.
Israel said it was forced to act because Palestinian security forces, which are coordinating with the military to counter a tense coalition of Islamist militants, were unable or unwilling to carry out a crackdown.
Palestinian security forces say the military attack has damaged their credibility and public support, especially in the absence of any political process. The last round of substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks concluded in 2009.
Israel said most of the victims were militants. But local youth protesting the invasion, as well as some civilians, were also killed in the violence.
Hundreds of people have been rounded up, many in so-called administrative detention, which allows Israel to detain them without trial or charge. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in fighting this year.
The UN envoy for the Middle East, Torwensland, said he was shocked by the rising bloodshed.
“The growing violence in the occupied West Bank is fueling a climate of fear, hatred and anger,” he said in a statement, calling on both sides to de-escalate tensions and take steps to revive the political process.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, and now 500,000 Jewish settlers live in some 130 settlements and other outposts of nearly 3 million Palestinians. Palestinians want this territory, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, to be their future state.
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