An Israeli man and his 18-year-old son have been shot dead in an ambush attack on their car south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
The victims were driving with five other family members when they were ambushed by a gunman near Otniel, a settlement in the southern Hebron hills.
The gunman was believed to have been hiding by the side of the road for an Israeli vehicle to drive by. He escaped by car after the shooting. The two dead men were identified as Ya’akov Litman and his son, Natanel.
Noam Bar, a paramedic for Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of a national Red Cross, said: “When we arrived at the scene, we saw seven people outside of a van, two of whom, a man in his 40s and an 18-year-old youth, were lying unconscious with gunshot wounds to their upper bodies. They were showing no signs of life, and there was no other choice but to pronounce them dead at the scene.”
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: “We will get to these despicable murderers and bring them to justice as we have in the past. We will fight terror in any place it is needed.”
Earlier on Friday, a 22-year-old Palestinian died a day after suffering wounds during clashes with Israeli forces near Hebron. Palestinian sources reported that a further four people were wounded in clashes in the same area.
The area has seen some of the worst violence in the recent surge of friction between Israelis and Palestinians. Friday’s incidents follow last week’s sniper fire on a crowd of Jews at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron’s Old City, which wounded two, and Thursday’s raid by undercover Israeli soldiers and security agents on a Hebron hospital, in which a Palestinian man was shot dead.
The Israeli military says over the past month Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks in Hebron, including more than 20 stabbings, multiple assaults with cars and other vehicles, and several shootings.
Since mid-September, 14 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings. Seventy-nine Palestinians have been killed, including 50 who Israel says were involved in attacks.
Friday’s attack was reminiscent of an incident in October, when Palestinians shot and killed an Israeli couple in front of their four children, including a four-month-old infant, as the family was driving in the West Bank. Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency later arrested five Palestinians it said were part of a Hamas cell that carried out the attack.
