Israeli military forces have shot and seriously injured a Palestinian teenage boy in occupied al-Quds over an alleged stabbing attempt, amid tensions in the occupied territories in recent days following the escape of six Palestinian prisoners from high-security Gilboa Prison last week.
Israeli media outlets alleged that the 17-year-old Palestinian, who was identified as Basil Shawarma and a resident of Deir al-Asal al-Fauqa town near the city of al-Khalil in the southern West Bank, stabbed two people outside the Central Bus Station in al-Quds on Monday before being shot by a police officer.
Al-Quds District Police Commander Doron Turgeman said Israeli forces detained two people near the bus station on suspicion of assisting the Palestinian teenager and were searching for others.
Turgeman claimed that the teen entered a store outside the bus station and stabbed two shoppers. As he struggled with one of them, he was shot by a policewoman at the location.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said paramedics treated two men who were moderately wounded, then took them to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in al-Quds.
Israeli medical sources said the two were in stable condition and had suffered stab wounds to their upper bodies.
Photos I The scene of the shooting of a Palestinian young man this afternoon on Jaffa Street, near the central bus station in Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/SrsrC0k25e
— Shehab (@ShehabPal) September 13, 2021
Israel’s English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported that the Palestinian teenage boy underwent surgery at Shaare Zedek Medical Center after resuscitation attempts.
“The escalation of stabbings in occupied al-Quds, the shootings, the increasing confrontations of popular anger in the West Bank and the demonstrations in Gaza come within the framework of the freedom intifada launched by our Palestinian people in solidarity with the heroic prisoners and confronting the brutality of the occupation against them,” Hamas later said in a statement.
“Sustaining the clash with the Zionist occupation and escalating the pace of operations with various means and tools are the best options to confront the Zionist occupation and force it to stop its crimes against our people and our prisoners in the occupation prisons,” the Palestinian resistance movement added.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Daoud Shehab, separately, said, “The commando operations in al-Quds and the West Bank reflect the extent of the rising popular anger as a result of the aggressive policies of the occupation against the prisoners.”
Shehab warned that Israel would “pay a price for its arrogance,” adding, “Acts of resistance are a legitimate right of the Palestinian people, and we bless and support this act and salute all the revolutionaries in al-Quds, the West Bank and everywhere, and we affirm that resistance is the most capable approach to deterring the occupation.”
The incident came hours after Israeli soldiers shot and injured a Palestinian man over an alleged stabbing attempt against the regime’s forces at the Gush Etzion junction in the southern West Bank.
In the predawn hours of September 6, Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin, and five Islamic Jihad members tunneled their way out through their cell’s drainage system and escaped from Gilboa prison.
Israeli prison officials were alerted by farmers who noticed them running through fields.
Four of the Islamic Jihad members were serving life sentences, while the fifth had been held without charge for two years under a so-called administrative detention order, according to Israeli media.
On Saturday, Israeli media outlets reported that four of the escapees had been arrested in the northern part of the occupied territories.