In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli soldier was slain and several others were injured in what is believed to be a Palestinian attack involving a truck.

It occurs at a time when deadly violence there has reached a level not seen in roughly twenty years.

Overnight, Palestinian militants detonated a homemade incendiary device near an Israeli military convoy in Nablus.

A 14-year-old Palestinian youth was fatally shot by an Israeli police officer in Jerusalem after allegedly stabbing a man.

According to an Israeli military official, the suspected attacker was a 41-year-old Palestinian male with a valid work permit in Israel. He was hauling a truck east toward the Maccabim crossing when he abruptly made a U-turn. He collided with a group of off-duty, uniformed soldiers who were standing on the side of the road.

One combatant died. Three soldiers, two individuals in a passing vehicle, and a Palestinian employee were injured. The driver of the unregistered truck fled and was shot dead by Israeli security officers at a checkpoint approximately six kilometers (four miles) away.

The purportedly targeted checkpoint is located on a busy main road leading from central Israel, through the West Bank, to Jerusalem.

Overnight, violence broke out in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, as the Israeli military attempted to secure a route for Jewish visitors to Joseph's Tomb, a sensitive holy site.

Since Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War, the area adjacent to Balata Refugee Camp has been a frequent flashpoint. The Israeli military reported that four servicemen were injured when an explosive device detonated next to them.

After the explosion, social media footage revealed a large column of white smoke rising into the air. Approximately thirty Palestinians were injured in Nablus during clashes with the Israeli army, according to local physicians.

An adolescent from occupied East Jerusalem was shot and killed by an off-duty Israeli police officer at a light rail station near the Old City on Wednesday evening. The station is located at the invisible dividing line between East and West Jerusalem.

The child, according to Israeli witnesses, stabbed a man in the back with a kitchen knife, while other civilians attempted to disarm him and fought with him. According to Israeli police, he was then slain by a train-borne officer. Some Palestinian reports have presented a divergent chronology of events.

 

Earlier in the day, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, an Israeli soldier shot and severely wounded a Palestinian man after he allegedly ran into them with his car and injured one soldier.

There has been an increase in Palestinian gunshot and vehicle-ramming attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers over the past year and a half. In the West Bank, there has been an increase in the number of Israeli military incursions and mass arrests, as well as an increase in extremist settler violence against Palestinians.

 

Israel claims that the majority of those slain were militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting incursions and uninvolved civilians have also been killed. During the same time period, approximately 33 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.