Two Palestinian attackers opened fire at a restaurant and gas station near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing four Israelis and wounding several other people before they were shot dead, authorities said, as violence roiled the occupied territory the day after a deadly Israeli military raid.
Israeli settlers attempted to carry out revenge attacks across the northern West Bank, raising fears of a repeat of a rampage last February that resulted in damage to dozens of Palestinian homes and vehicles and the killing of a Palestinian man.
Carloads of Israeli settlers drove to the northern Palestinian towns of Hawara, Beit Furik, Burin and surrounding villages, setting dozens of cars on fire, hurling stones and trying to set homes ablaze, said Nablus official Ghassan Daghlas. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries.
Tuesday’s violence underscored the fragility of the situation in the West Bank, where on Monday an Israeli military raid into the northern Jenin refugee camp ignited some of the fiercest Israeli-Palestinian fighting in years, killing six Palestinians and wounding scores more. Palestinian militants targeted Israeli military vehicles with powerful roadside bombs and Israeli forces deployed helicopter gunships to evacuate stranded troops.
In the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus late Tuesday, two Palestinian teenagers were killed when homemade explosives they were handling went off accidentally, the local Islamic Jihad branch said in a statement of condolences. The militant group named the two Palestinians killed as 17-year-old Mohammed Hashah and 18-year-old Alaa Hafnawi.
Palestinian media reported that a third was wounded by the blast.
A surge in violence in recent months has killed at least 130 Palestinians and 24 people on the Israeli side so far this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press, prompting many on either side of the conflict to fear a possible greater conflagration.
