Tel Aviv, Sept 23. (dpa/GNA) – The son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, was critically injured in a car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.
Ambassador Yechiel Leiter said on X that his son, Neria, a reservist in the Israeli military, was rushed to hospital in Jerusalem and needed a “miracle” to survive.
The Israeli military said the suspected Palestinian attacker was killed.
The car-ramming occurred at a military checkpoint near the border with Israel. Neria Leiter was on duty at the Maccabim checkpoint at the time, authorities said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service had earlier said, a man aged around 30, had suffered serious injuries and was unconscious.
Israeli police said an attacker drove his vehicle towards a police car, injuring a soldier who was working alongside police officers. Security forces then killed the attacker, police said.
Neria Leiter’s older brother was killed along with three other reservists in the northern Gaza Strip in November 2023, according to media reports.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is due to take the stage at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, with the conflicts in the Middle East expected to dominate his address.
The Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, praised the attack as a “heroic operation,” describing it as a “natural response” to attacks by radical Israeli settlers.
The group called for intensified “resistance in all its forms and by all means” against the Israeli occupation and settlers in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Tensions in the occupied West Bank have risen further, since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent Gaza war.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 1,100 Palestinians have since been killed there in Israeli military operations, armed clashes and attacks carried out by Palestinians.
Violence by radical Israeli settlers against Palestinians has also increased significantly.
GNA