Palestinian driver shot dead after car hit Israeli civilians in West Bank

Israeli police say the incident was an intentional attack

Israeli security and emergency services remove the body of a Palestinian driver who was shot dead after his car hit two Israelis near a settlement in the occupied West Bank, on August 17, 2019. AP Photo

Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian driver they said had carried out a car-ramming attack on Friday that injured two Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank, one of them critically.

An Israeli police spokesman said an officer who had been near the scene opened fire after the driver rammed his car into people by the roadside near the Israeli settlement of Elazar, close to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

Israel's Magen David Adom ambulance service said one of the Israelis, 17, was unresponsive and "in severe condition with multisystem trauma" and that the other, 19, had sustained moderate injuries.

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Dozens of Israeli troops and medics were at the scene. The alleged attacker's vehicle, which bore Israeli licence plates which allow greater freedom of movement in both Israel and the West Bank, was overturned by the roadside. Police said the driver had been travelling along a road which weaves past Palestinian towns and Israeli settlements.

Palestinians carried out a wave of car-rammings in the West Bank in late 2015 and 2016, but the frequency of such incidents has since ebbed.

Two Palestinian youths stabbed an Israeli policeman in Jerusalem's Old City on Thursday and were shot by officers, killing one of them.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek to establish a state there and in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2014.