Israeli troops shoot dead Palestinian at West Bank checkpoint

JERUSALEM - Reuters

Israeli soldiers stand at the scene of a shooting in which a Palestinian was shot dead by the Israeli army at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus November 7, 2013. REUTERS photo

Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian who tried to stab one of them at a West Bank checkpoint on Friday, a police spokesman said, the second Palestinian fatality in the territory in a few hours.

The spokesman said the Palestinian man had brandished a knife at a West Bank checkpoint near Jerusalem and ignored calls from paramilitary Border Police officers to stop before he was shot and killed.

Palestinian medical officials identified the man as a 23-year-old from Hebron in the southern West Bank.
 
In an earlier incident on Thursday in another part of the West Bank, soldiers killed a man who fired a flare gun at Israelis at a roadside bus stop, a witness and Israeli authorities said.

The latest violence has coincided with efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who is visiting the region, to push forward peace talks and avoid what he said could be a "third Intifada," or Palestinian uprising against Israel.
 
Ten Palestinians have been shot dead in the occupied West Bank by Israeli troops and three Israelis have been killed since Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking resumed in July following a three-year freeze.