An Israeli soldier was killed, on Tuesday, in a shooting attack near a settlement in the occupied West Bank.
In a statement confirming the soldier’s death, the Israeli army said that the attackers arrived in a car near the Shefa Shomron gathering and fired live bullets at their soldiers.
The Israeli army identified the soldier as 21-year-old, Ido Baruch, from Hadera (north).
The Nablus-based Lion’s Den militant group claimed responsibility for the attack near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank.
“We announce carrying out a second shooting operation targeting occupation (Israeli) soldiers in the Deir Sharaf area, west of Nablus,” the group said.
Nablus’s operation is a part of a series of Palestinian operations against the Israeli forces and settlers, in retaliation for Israeli assassinations of Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank.
This is the second attack of its kind in less than a week. Tuesday’s attack comes three days after an Israeli soldier was shot dead at a military checkpoint in occupied East Jerusalem. The Israeli forces continue to pursue the alleged perpetrator.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz sent his condolences to the family of the slain soldier.
Gantz took to Twitter and wrote, “The pursuit is continuing and we will arrest the terrorist and those who helped him,” stressing that the operations against “terrorism will continue intensively to provide security for the citizens of Israel”.
