Tel Aviv [Israel], August 19 : Two Israeli men, a father and son, were shot dead in a terror attack in the northern West Bank town of Israel's Huwara on Saturday, the military and medics said, according to the Times of Israel.
The shooting occurred inside a carwash in the town, located south of Nablus.
The medics carried out resuscitation efforts on a 29-year-old man and a man in his 60s who were hit by gunfire. They were both declared dead at the scene shortly afterwards. The Israel Defense Forces said it had launched a manhunt for the assailant and closed off a number of roads in the area, the Times of India reported.
The terrorist was believed by the IDF to have approached the carwash on foot and opened fire at the two Israelis with a handgun, according to a preliminary investigation. It was unclear how the assailant fled.
It was not immediately clear why the two men, who were not residents of the area, were at the carwash in the town.
The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups praised the attack, calling it “heroic” and “a natural response to the crimes of the occupation.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was set to hold an assessment with security officials later Saturday, his office said.
Huwara has long been a flashpoint in the West Bank, thanks to a main thoroughfare running through the town also being used regularly by Israelis to travel to and from settlements. There are plans to build a bypass road for settlers to avoid having to travel through the town but work on this has dragged on for years.
There have been several shooting attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers in the town in recent months, including the killing of two brothers in February.
There have also been a handful of instances of settler violence targeting the Palestinian residents of Huwara, including a deadly rampage that unfolded hours after the February attack in which the two Israeli brothers were shot dead.
Violence has surged across the West Bank over the past year and a half, with a rise in Palestinian shooting attacks against Israeli civilians and troops, near-nightly arrest raids by the military, and an uptick in attacks by extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinians.
Palestinian terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank have left 28 people dead and several others seriously wounded since the beginning of the year, including Saturday’s shooting.
According to a tally by The Times of Israel, 173 West Bank Palestinians have also been killed during the same period — most of them during clashes with security forces or while carrying out attacks, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under unclear circumstances, including by armed Israeli settlers.
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