A violent incident occured in Susiya junction near the Hebron Hills on Saturday, when a Palestinian man threw stones towards two Israeli men, one of them an off-duty soldier, and stole a weapon from them.
The IDF clarified in a statement that, contrary to initial reports, the incident was not a shooting attack but a “violent clash” that included stone-throwing between the two parties.
The statement added that the attacker took the weapon from one of the civilians involved, at which point shots were heard in the air.
The Mount Hebron Council said in an announcement that one of the men involved was a local farmer from the area and the other one was an active-duty soldier who was on leave at home.
Security and armed forces have been deployed to the area and are conducting an extensive search to locate the attacker, with reports indicating that the stolen weapon was located and recovered.
According to Magen David Adom, the two men, aged 20 and 25 years old, were wounded in the incident. One of them was treated at the site, while the other was referred to Soroka Hospital in moderate condition with a head injury, MDA added.
The incident followed a wide-scale IDF operation in the West Bank overnight, launched after Friday’s terror shooting near Gilad Farm, southwest of Nablus, which wounded two Israelis and led to the arrest of more than 70 terror suspects.