2 dead, 5 injured in shooting near Israeli checkpoint in West Bank

Three Palestinians opened fire at motorists near an Israeli checkpoint in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem on Thursday, killing two people and wounding five, emergency services said.

One woman was seriously wounded, Israel’s ambulance service said.

Police said officers and civilians at the site shot dead two gunmen and wounded a third. The assailants were from the area of the West Bank Palestinian city of Bethlehem, police said.

At the scene of the shooting near the Israeli Maale Adumim settlement, far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for more roadblocks to be erected in the area and said Israeli safety trumped Palestinian freedom of movement.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for thousands more homes to be built in settlements, which most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this view and cites historical and biblical ties to the land it captured in a 1967 war.

Hamas, the Palestinian terror group against which Israel has launched a military offensive in Gaza, praised the attack as a “natural response” to the war and called on Palestinians everywhere to take up arms.

Violence in the West Bank, among the territories which the Palestinians want for an independent state, was on the rise before the Gaza war and has increased since, with frequent Israeli arrest raids and often deadly clashes.

Last Friday, a Palestinian shooting attack in southern Israel killed two people.

In Gaza, the Israeli offensive against Hamas has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, according to local authorities, laid much of the enclave to waste and displaced most of its 2.3 million population.

Israel says its goal is to eliminate Hamas, a group sworn to Israel’s destruction whose fighters killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostage in southern Israel in their attack last October 7.