West Bank Checkpoints Ordered to High Alert After Car-Ramming Attack

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz ordered West Bank checkpoints to move to high alert in the wake of a car-ramming attack early Monday morning at the Te’enim Checkpoint near the West Bank city of Tulkarem. It is the fifth Palestinian terror attack carried out in the past two-and-a-half weeks, all by attackers characterized as lone wolves. Monday’s attacker, identified as Muhammad Nidal Younis, 16, from the West Bank city of Nablus, was shot by security forces at the checkpoint and later died in a hospital in central Israel. The guard that sustained head and chest injuries when he was rammed by the car was taken to a Tel Aviv hospital.  Defense Ministry Director General Amir Eshel, said that “the guards acted swiftly, exactly as we train them” to do. It is the second Palestinian attack on Israelis in just over two days. On Saturday, a Palestinian man stabbed an Israeli civilian near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, and was killed by Border Police officers.