Palestinian attacker kills Israeli soldier and rabbi in West Bank

An Israeli rabbi has become the second person to die as a result of an attack by a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank.

Achiad Ettinger, 47, from the Israeli settlement of Eli, died on Monday a day after being shot at a busy road junction.

The assailant fatally stabbed a 19-year-old soldier, SSgt Gal Keidan, then stole his weapon and fired at passing cars and other soldiers before escaping. The army launched a search for him.

Israeli media named a suspect but the government did not confirm the reports. The suspect reportedly has no known affiliation with militant organisations.

Relatives of Ettinger, who headed a religious seminary and had 12 children, told local media that after he was shot he fired back several times in the direction of the gunman. Many settlers in the Palestinian territories carry weapons.

Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, said: “Rabbi Ettinger’s life’s work will continue and be among us even after his passing, and the strength he gave his pupils and the community he led will continue to strengthen us through the enormous grief and sorrow.”

The army said a second Israeli soldier was in a serious condition in hospital with bullet wounds. Troops went house to house to search for the gunman and the military said it had surveyed the suspect’s home for demolition – a longstanding Israeli tactic that it argues is to deter attacks.

Israel is due to hold an election on 9 April. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his allies have sought to paint his main political challengers as weak on security issues. Netanyahu, who leads the most rightwing government in Israeli history, relies on support from settlers in the West Bank.

Hours after the attack, Netanyahu’s culture minister, Miri Regev, accused a rival candidate, Benny Gantz, of supporting an Arab legislator whom she accused of inciting Palestinian violence. Gantz, a former armed forces chief, said Regev was using Israeli deaths for “political propaganda”.

Attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians peaked in late 2015 and 2016 and have since become more sporadic. UN figures show Palestinian attackers killed 14 Israelis in 2018. A higher proportion of victims were civilians compared with the year before.

In the same period Israeli forces killed 295 Palestinians, the UN said, most of them in Gaza where the army has shot thousands of protesters along the frontier who were demanding, in part, an end to a severe blockade on people and goods. Israel has also bombed Gaza in response to periodic rocket fire from the strip’s rulers, Hamas.

Last week Palestinians threw a firebomb into an Israeli police post at a site in Jerusalem revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Disputes over access to the sacred compound have previously led to periods of heightened violence.

On the same day, Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the West Bank, including one person they said had attacked soldiers with a knife.