Palestinians sought after seven Israelis are shot outside West Bank settlement
The Israeli military is still hunting for a Palestinian gunman after a drive-by shooting wounded Israelis near a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Sunday night.
Six people were taken to hospital after the attack near the Ofra settlement north of Jerusalem, the army said. They included a woman, 30, who was in a serious condition.
“Shots were fired at Israeli civilians standing at a bus station from a passing Palestinian vehicle,” the military wrote on Twitter.
Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, praised the attack as a heroic reaction to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its settlement enterprise.
“The heroic Ofra operation is an affirmation of our people’s choice and legitimacy in resisting the Zionist occupation and its settlers,” Hamas spokesman Abdelatif Al Qanou, posted on his Facebook page.
“It proves that any attempt to condemn the Palestinian resistance will fail in the face of the desire and valiance of our Palestinian people.”
Israeli soldiers “responded by firing towards the vehicle, which fled”, the army said. “Troops are currently searching the area.”
The Israeli police and soldiers yesterday searched Palestinian villages for the culprits, believing there were two people in the car involved.
They arrested 25 Palestinians in raids across Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinian news agency Wafa said.
Israeli forces regularly conduct raids across the West Bank to detain Palestinians, often prompting clashes.
Sunday’s shooting is the first such attack in the West Bank since November 26 when a Palestinian rammed Israeli soldiers with a car and injured three of them.
The attacker was later killed by Israeli forces.
In response to Sunday’s attack, Israel’s far-right nationalist Jewish Home party called for the legalisation of settlement homes in Ofra and for it to be made a regular Israel town, despite its location in the West Bank, the territory that the Palestinians seek for any future state.
Israeli outposts, considered illegal under international law, host more than 400,000 Jewish occupants in the West Bank.
Ofra was built on land belonging to Palestinians before Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
It hosts around 3,500 settlers and a settlement watchdog has shown that it was built on land expropriated from Palestinians.
Israeli forces regularly conduct raids across the West Bank to detain Palestinians