NEAR HUWARA, West Bank, Aug 19 (Reuters) – A suspected Palestinian gunman fatally shot two Israelis in the West Bank on Saturday, the Jewish state army said, in a troubled area where violence has escalated for months. .
The men, father and son, were shot at point-blank range at a car wash in the Palestinian town of Huwara, according to the Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
The Israeli army said it was searching the area for the attacker and had set up roadblocks in the vicinity of the attack. The Israeli ambulance service confirmed that two people had died in the episode.
The Huwara area in the northern West Bank has been the scene of other deadly attacks against Israelis and retaliatory attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians.
Violence in the West Bank has worsened in the past 15 months with frequent Israeli incursions and Palestinian street attacks.
Prospects for resuming the US-sponsored peace talks, which sought to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, remain dim nearly a decade after their failure.
Israel seized the West Bank in a 1967 war and has since built dozens of settlements there considered illegal by most countries.
The Palestinians have limited self-rule in the West Bank and remain divided between a Western-backed administration and the Islamist group Hamas, which rejects coexistence with Israel, while many in the current Israeli government oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.
Hamas and other armed groups praised the Huwara attack on Saturday. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Raneen Sawafta near Huwara and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. Editing in Spanish by Javier Leira)
Source: Ambito
