A Palestinian teenager was shot dead in the West Bank and four Israelis were wounded near a kibbutz Sunday as violence mounted following a Gaza air strike that killed a pregnant woman and toddler.
Israeli forces shot dead the teenager, identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Ahmad Sharake, 13, during clashes near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Medics said dozens of Palestinians were shot and wounded in other clashes across the West Bank.
Within hours of Sharake’s killing, four Jews were attacked near Gan Shmuel kibbutz in northern Israel by an Arab Israeli who rammed them with his car and then lunged at them.
The Israeli army revealed that two soldiers were hit by the car, with one of them seriously injured, and two civilians were stabbed.
And with unrest threatening to spiral into a full-scale intifada, or uprising, a retaliatory Israeli air strike in Gaza overnight killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and her toddler.
The violence came on top of more than 10 days of clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, as well as a series of Palestinian stabbings of Jews.
Gaza was only drawn into the violence on Friday, with clashes along the border since leaving nine Palestinians dead from Israeli fire.
Two rockets fired at Israel, one of which hit an open field and the other was intercepted, prompted Israel to carry out an air strike overnight Saturday targeting arms manufacturing facilities of the Islamist movement Hamas.
The Israeli strike demolished a house in the northern Gaza area of Zeitun, killing Nur Hassan, 30, and her two-year-old daughter Rahaf.
On Sunday night, another rocket crashed into an open field in southern Israel without causing harm on injury, the army said.
Amid fury over the killings of the Palestinian mother and child, a spokesman for Hamas which controls the coastal enclave said “this shows the occupation’s desire to escalate”.
“We warn the occupation against continuing this foolishness,” said Sami Abu Zuhri.
Six Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli forces in central and northern Gaza on Sunday.
A military spokeswoman told AFP that soldiers opened fire after hundreds of Palestinians hurled rocks and tried to rupture the border fence with burning tyres.
The Hamas chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, has already branded the spiralling violence between Israel and the Palestinians an intifada and called for further unrest.
