Israel police kill Palestinian in stabbing attack

JERUSALEM: A Palestinian man was shot dead Wednesday after he hit an Israeli police officer with a van at a West Bank checkpoint and then stabbed him with a pair of scissors, police said.

A pipe bomb was found at the scene which the attacker had apparently intended to hurl at the officers, police said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished a “speedy recovery” to the policeman – who was taken to hospital but was not in a life-threatening condition – and congratulated the forces who had “acted speedily and neutralised the terrorist”.

A video published online showed the van hitting the officer, and the driver getting out and chasing him.

“The terrorist drove his vehicle into the border policeman that was on duty,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in an English-language statement, saying the attacker then stabbed the officer with a pair of scissors.

Other police officers opened fire and “the terrorist was shot and killed,” Rosenfeld said.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the dead man was a Palestinian but did not immediately identify him.

The attack took place between the Jewish West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and the Palestinian neighbourhood of Abu Dis, on the outskirts of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

A series of dozens of so-called lone wolf attacks broke out in the West Bank in late 2015. The situation has since calmed, but sporadic attacks continue.

— AFP photo Israeli paramedics remove the body of a Palestinian man who reportedly carried out an attack against Israeli forces and was subsequently shot dead at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank between the village of Abu Dis and the town of Bethlehem.