One killed, three wounded in West Bank attack - Israel army, emergency service

Israeli soldiers stand the site of a reported attack at the Gush Etzion Junction, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on November 18, 2025. Photo / Ahmad Gharabli, AFP

A car-ramming and stabbing attack has left one person dead and three injured near Israeli settlements in the southern occupied West Bank, Israeli emergency services and the military said.

Paramedics and an army medical force “established the death of a man aged 30 with a stab wound and referred three injured people” to two Jerusalem hospitals, Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said.

The three injured people are a woman in her 40s in a serious condition, a man in his 30s and a boy of about 15, both in moderate condition.

In a separate statement, the army reported a “ramming and stabbing attack in the area of Gush Etzion Junction” in the southern West Bank, which has seen repeated attacks against Israelis in recent years.

The army did not specify the number of casualties, but said that soldiers “eliminated two terrorists at the scene” and that “explosive materials were found in [their] vehicle”.

It also said that “soldiers are conducting searches and roadblocks, and encircling the area”.

The Israeli West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, said the victim was local resident Aharon Cohen.

The Palestinian Civil Affairs Authority named the assailants as Imran al-Atrash and Walid Sabbarna, two 18-year-olds from the Hebron area, and said that Israeli forces were “holding their bodies”.

The Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem said the woman who had been seriously injured suffered a gunshot wound to her lower body and was undergoing surgery.

Israeli media reported that she was shot by accident by Israeli security forces.

‘Pay a very high price’

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas hailed the attackers, saying: “The heroic car-ramming and stabbing attack that took place near the Gush Etzion settlement south of Bethlehem is a natural response to [Israel’s] attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause and the escalating aggression perpetrated by occupation soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group also praised the attackers.

“These heroic operations come in response to the relentless crimes of the settler gangs and the occupation army against our people,” it said.

Yaron Rosenthal, the head of the Gush Etzion regional council, vowed in a video statement from the scene of the attack that residents of the area “together with the army, will make the terrorists and all their community pay a very high price”.

The Yesha Council, a body representing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, blamed the assault on the Israeli Government’s refusal to annex the Palestinian territory.

“When the State of Israel silently allows a ‘pathway to a Palestinian state’, terrorism raises its head again,” the council said.

Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.

At least 1007 Palestinians, including militants, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the war started, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

During the same period, 43 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the West Bank, according to official Israeli figures.

- Agence France-Presse