A Palestinian young man was killed by the Israeli occupation police on Thursday afternoon after he opened fire at police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem and lightly injured one of them.

The incident occurred outside the Aqsa Mosque, particularly between the King Faisal Gate and al-Asbat Gate (the Lions Gate), according to different news reports.

The police said the slain young man approached officers near al-Asbat Gate and opened fire at them, but they responded quickly by firing a hail of bullets at him.

Soon later, the Israeli police cordoned off the areas around the Old city, and closed off all Palestinian neighborhoods, including Silwan and Ras al-Amud. They also closed the checkpoints of az-Za'ayyem and Beit Hanina to the east of Jerusalem.

The shooting attack came hours after a car-ramming in Occupied Jerusalem earlier in the day in which 12 army soldiers were injured, one of them seriously.

Later on Thursday morning, a Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters, identified Mohamed Abu Ghaniya, suffered a rubber bullet injury in his abdomen during violent clashes between local youths and Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem city.

A young man also suffered from an injury when a teargas canister hit his head and a paramedic was injured in one of his feet during the events.

According to the Red Crescent in Bethlehem, about 30 Palestinian citizens suffered from their exposure to tear gas fumes and were provided with on-site medical assistance.

Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli soldiers also broke into and ransacked several commercial stores and confiscated security camera recordings in Bethlehem city and Beit Jala town.

The clashes erupted after Israeli police and army forces launched violent raids on homes and businesses in Bethlehem city and the nearby town of Beit Jala as part of a large-scale manhunt for the driver who carried out the car-ramming operation that injured 12 soldiers in Jerusalem at dawn Thursday.  

During their campaign in the area, Israeli forces reportedly found the car used in the operation abandoned in the town of Beit Jala outside Bethlehem.

Tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem have been heightened over the past week, following US president Donald Trump released his peace plan — informally dubbed as the deal of the century. The plan has received wide international condemnation as it is seen as overwhelmingly biased in favor of Israel and torpedoing the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In the week and a half since the plan’s release, a significant increase in angry reactions to daily Israeli violations has been noticed in the West Bank and Jerusalem, with regular angry rallies, stone-throwing and strong opposition to Israeli arrest raids.

On Wednesday, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli troops after he allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at them in al-Khalil.

Another Palestinian young man, a Palestinian Authority policeman, was also shot dead during clashes with local youths in Jenin in the predawn hours of Thursday morning. The shooting incident happened under unclear circumstances.

The Israeli occupation army claimed the shooting of a PA officer was an accident and said it would investigate it.

 

Source: The Palestinian Information Center