Police said Friday that undercover Border Police officers killed a Palestinian man who was hurling an explosive device at troops during a raid in the West Bank, as tensions in the region skyrocketed in the lead-up to the final Friday prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The officers raided the West Bank city of Tulkarem in the morning to detain three wanted Palestinians suspected of involvement in terror activities, police said.
According to Palestinian media, the shooting occurred in the adjacent Nur Shams refugee camp.
Police said the officers detained the wanted men, and as they left the city a violent riot erupted, during which “a terrorist was eliminated by the undercover force after he threw an explosive device in their direction.”
He was named by Palestinian media as Sa’ed Abu Alawiya.
Meanwhile, the IDF said it operated overnight in the southern west Bank town of Dura, to measure the home of a terrorist who carried out a stabbing attack in Gan Yavne earlier this week, ahead of its potential demolition. Lidor Levy, 34, was killed and two other Israelis were seriously wounded in the attack carried out by the 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist at a mall in the city, close to Ashdod.
Tensions in Israel and the West Bank have been high since October 7, when terrorists burst through the Gaza border into Israel in a Hamas-led attack, killing at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seizing 253 hostages.
Authorities have expressed worries that violence could ratchet upward during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Tensions were especially high on Friday, with Iran threatening retaliation for an alleged Israeli strike in Damascus that killed several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members, including the country’s top commander in Syria.
The funeral ceremony for the IRGC members coincided with Quds (Jerusalem) Day, which Iran and its allies have marked on the last Friday of Ramadan each year since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, claiming it as an occasion to express support for the Palestinians.
Since October 7, troops have arrested some 3,700 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,600 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry, more than 450 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time.
In Jerusalem on Friday, police arrested eight people suspected of chants amounting to incitement and support for terrorism after morning prayers for the final Friday of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount.
For the first time since the beginning of the holy month, a police drone dropped tear gas on the suspected inciters at the flashpoint site.
A police statement said thousands of worshipers attended morning prayers, with police deployed in large numbers throughout Jerusalem’s Old City.
The suspects, four from East Jerusalem and four from northern Israel, were detained for questioning.
“These vile instigators and supporters of terrorism are residents of the State of Israel who take advantage of a religious occasion and use a holy place of prayer for incitement and support for terrorism and terrorists,” the police statement said.
“They harm first and foremost the normative Muslim public who come to the Temple Mount and do not take part in those serious incitement demonstrations.”
Despite heightened concerns over Ramadan, Friday afternoon prayers at the Temple Mount have passed peacefully over the past three weeks.
The site is the holiest place in Judaism, where two biblical Temples once stood, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest shrine in Islam, making the site a perennial flashpoint of the Israeli-Arab conflict.