RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – An Israeli security guard shot dead an unarmed Palestinian who tried to break into a house in a small settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the Israeli military said.
The incident occurred overnight when a guard spotted the man, an army statement said. It said the Palestinian assaulted the guard before being shot and killed by another guard.
The incident was being treated as a terrorist attack, the statement added, though no weapon was found on the Palestinian’s body.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing of the 34-year-old man, saying he had been shot on land he owned which had been seized Israeli settlers.
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are one of the most heated issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians envisage the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, along with Gaza as part of a future independent state.
Talks on a peace agreement have been frozen since 2014.
Reporting by Ali Sawafta; Editing by Mark Heinrich