Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli soldiers and police on an arrest mission in the town of Nabi Salah in the occupied West Bank shot dead a Palestinian who attempted to open fire at them early Sunday, the army said.
“The forces encountered the suspect, who attempted to open fire at them,” a statement from the Israeli army read. “In response to the immediate threat forces fired towards the attacker resulting in his death.”
Palestinian security forces and family identified the suspect as 34-year-old Amar Tirawi from Kafr Ein, a town near Nabi Salah in the central West Bank. Officials had earlier given another name for the suspect.
Another Palestinian suspect was lightly wounded and arrested, the statement from the military read.
On Saturday, a gunman targeted a vehicle near an Israeli settlement north of Ramallah and wounded a foreign national of Palestinian descent who is residing in a Palestinian village.
In a separate incident, gunshots hit a military post near Nabi Salah.
The army said Tirawi was behind both incidents.
Loading ...Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency named Tirawi as Amar Halil and said he had carried out the shootings along with his fiancee Rawan Ambar due to their families’ refusal to accept their engagement.
According to the Shin Bet, Tirawi was a former member of the Palestinian preventive security who became an arms trader.
Tirawi’s fiancee had turned herself in to Palestinian security forces, the Shin Bet said, confirming to AFP she was in their custody since late Saturday, hours before the fatal raid.
Sources in Tirawi’s village told AFP he had been detained by Palestinian security forces for a number of days in the past few weeks, and that he was wanted by Israeli security prior to the Saturday shootings.
The Shin Bet refused to comment on that report.
A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has claimed the lives of at least 282 Palestinians or Arab Israelis, 44 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP toll.
Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.
Others were shot dead in protests and clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
The violence has greatly subsided in recent months.
