Two Israeli men were lightly wounded in a shooting attack in the northern West Bank town of Huwara on Tuesday evening, the military and medics said.
The pair, in their 30s, came under fire while driving on the Route 60 highway, which traverses the Palestinian town that has been the scene of multiple recent attacks.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said the men were in good condition, after suffering minor injuries by glass shards as a result of the gunfire toward the windshield of their car.
“We quickly arrived at the scene and saw a vehicle with bullet holes. The two injured were sitting inside the vehicle suffering from glass shards to their heads and miraculously were not directly hit by the gunfire,” MDA medic Ezra Pollack said.
The two men were taken to the Beilinson Medical Center in Petah Tikva for further treatment, MDA said.
The Israel Defense Forces said troops were carrying out scans for suspects involved in the terror attack, and had deployed roadblocks in the area.
شاهد لحظة نقل المصابين في عملية حوارة إلى مستشفيات الداخل pic.twitter.com/cNTymjUyiy
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) September 12, 2023
Army Radio cited a security source as saying the shooting was carried out by a terrorist on foot, rather than a drive-by attack. It remained unclear how the assailant fled the scene.
Huwara has long been a flashpoint in the West Bank, due to a main thoroughfare running through the town that is used regularly by Israelis to travel to and from settlements. There are plans to build a bypass road for settlers to avoid having to travel through the town, but work on this has dragged on for years.
Israeli soldiers are seen at the scene of a shooting attack in the West Bank town of Huwara, March 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
There have been several shooting attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers in the town this year, including the killing of two brothers in February, and a father and son last month.
There have also been a handful of instances of settler violence targeting the Palestinian residents of Huwara, including a deadly rampage that unfolded hours after the February attack in which the two Israeli brothers were shot dead.
Violence has surged across the West Bank over the past year and a half, with a rise in Palestinian shooting attacks against Israeli civilians and troops, near-nightly arrest raids by the military, and an uptick in revenge attacks by extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinians.
Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank since the beginning of the year have left 27 civilians and three soldiers dead, and several others seriously wounded.
According to a tally by The Times of Israel, 181 West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians have been killed during the same period — the majority during clashes with security forces or while carrying out attacks, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under unclear circumstances, including by armed Israeli settlers.
