Three Israeli soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, when a Palestinian police officer opened fire on them at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.
The gunman approached the checkpoint, which is near located the Jewish settlement of Beit El, and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle at the troops stationed there.
The assailant, named as Muhammad Turkman, a police officer from Qabatiya, was shot and killed by Israeli forces an IDF spokesperson said.
The three soldiers were all approximately 20 years old and sustained “penetrating wounds” to the extremities. The seriously injured soldier was taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus for treatment.
In a statement, the Hamas terrorist organisation praised the attack and encouraged other members of the Palestinian security services to carry out similar attacks.
According to a family member of the gunman, Palestinian Authority security forces had attempted to arrest him prior to the attack. An unnamed sibling said: “The security forces came to our home about an hour before he carried out the operation and confiscated weapons… They then said they would arrest Muhammed, but as you know, they did not reach him in time”.
There have been a small number of attacks carried out by members of the Palestinian security services. In January, another member of the PA security forces, Amjad Sakari, aged 35, also opened fire at a group of soldiers manning the same checkpoint, injuring three of them.
Two weeks later, a Palestinian police officer along with a companion, opened fire at a group of Border Police officers at the Damascus Gate.
