An Israel Defense Forces soldier died after being critically wounded in a terrorist truck-ramming attack near the Jewish community of Beit El in Samaria on Wednesday morning, the military announced.
IDF Staff Sgt. Geri Gideon Hanghal, 24, from the city of Nof HaGalil in northern Israel, served in the Nachshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade.
Magen David Adom said its medics and paramedics treated the victim on the scene after he was hit by the truck near the Givat Assaf Junction. The vehicle was a gas tanker that smashed into a bus stop, MDA said, adding that he was found unconscious with multiple systemic injuries.
The IDF said that the terrorist was neutralized on the spot and that soldiers were manning roadblocks in the area. He was named as Ail Deif Allah, 58, a resident of the Arab village of Rafat, southwest of Ramallah.
The terrorist was evacuated in serious condition to Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to the Jordan Valley on Wednesday amid a sharp rise in terrorism throughout Judea and Samaria, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
On Monday, Israeli security forces arrested three members of a Palestinian terrorist cell that planned to attack Israelis “in the immediate time frame.”
Police arrested one of the suspects after pulling him over on the busy Route 6 highway near the Horeshim interchange.
The interchange is located near several cities in Israel’s densely populated coastal plain.
After Shin Bet officers questioned the suspects, security forces arrested two more members of the terrorist squad at their homes in Bani Na’im, a Palestinian town some five miles east of Hebron in Judea.
A day earlier, three Israeli security guards at the Allenby Bridge crossing in the Jordan Valley were killed in a terrorist shooting.
The victims were named as Yohanan Shchori, 61, a father of six from Ma’ale Efraim; Yuri Birnbaum, 65, from Moshav Na’ama north of Jericho; and Adrian Marcelo Podsmeser, from the city of Ariel in Samaria.
On Sept. 1, three Israeli police officers were killed in a drive-by shooting near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, some 7.5 miles northwest of Hebron in Judea.
They were identified as Chief Inspector Arik Ben Eliyahu, 37, from Kiryat Gat, who is survived by his wife and three children; Command Sgt. Maj. Hadas Branch, 53, from Moshav Sde Moshe, who is survived by her husband, three children and granddaughter; and 1st Sgt. Roni Shakuri, 61, from Sderot, who is survived by his wife, daughter and granddaughter.
Shakuri’s other daughter, 1st Sgt. Mor Shakuri, 29, was killed in Sderot on Oct. 7 while fighting Hamas terrorists attempting to take control of the city’s police station.
