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An Israeli man was seriously wounded on Thursday in a stabbing attack near the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh while trying to extinguish a fire, medics and the military said.
The stabbing occurred close to the Derech Avraham farming outpost. Israeli settlers had been working in the area to extinguish a blaze in the area.
At the site of the fire, a clash erupted between Israelis and Palestinians during which two Palestinian assailants stabbed an Israeli man, identified as Itamar Cohen, before they were shot dead.
“Another civilian who was at the scene identified the attack and eliminated the two terrorists,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said its medics treated 51-year-old Cohen, who was stabbed in the chest and seriously wounded. He was then airlifted to a hospital by the Israeli Air Force’s elite Unit 669 for further treatment.
Troops encircled the nearby Palestinian town of Beit Furik following the incident and were carrying out searches in the area, the army said.
The IDF initially claimed the fire had been set by Palestinians from Beit Furik, but later backtracked and said the cause of the blaze was unknown.
Police officers and firefighters investigated the circumstances of the fire, and later announced that it was arson, without specifying if Palestinians were the ones to blame.
The Palestinian Authority’s Wafa news agency alleged the fire was started by Israeli settlers from the area.
“This is a serious terror incident,” Samaria Regional Council chairman Yossi Dagan said in a statement. “We are again and again witnesses to arson and terror attacks.”
Dagan blamed the Palestinian Authority and terror organizations for inciting attacks and demanded an “iron fist from the government” to deal with the violence.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.
More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the war started, according to the PA health ministry. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 66 civilians and Israeli security personnel have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes during raids in Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
The same period has also seen a major surge in attacks by settler extremists on Palestinians and their property across the West Bank. The IDF recorded 867 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence in 2025. The total for 2024 was 682 incidents.
The post Israeli man seriously wounded in stabbing near West Bank outpost; Palestinian attackers killed appeared first on The Times of Israel.
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