GAZA: Israeli police said officers shot and killed a Palestinian after he stabbed a police officer Tuesday in the occupied West Bank. Police said the officer was lightly wounded in the attack and identified the Palestinian as a 19-year-old from the Gaza Strip. It wasn’t immediately clear what he was doing in the West Bank.
The bloodshed is part of a wave of violence surging in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the territory during that time, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, most of them in fighting with Israeli forces. Others were killed while throwing stones, or in protests against the military. Some of those killed were not involved in confrontations with Israeli forces. Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the West Bank have also been on the rise since the war broke out.
Hamas' Oct. 7 attack sparked the war with militants storming into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,400 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.
Under American pressure, Israel has pledged to deliver large quantities of humanitarian aid into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. But at the same time, the U.S. and Israel have allowed tax-deductible donations to far-right groups that have blocked that aid from being delivered.