Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man after he attempted to ram his car into them, Israeli police said Tuesday.

Police said the driver drove through a checkpoint the border guards had set up in Idhna, near Hebron. He hit a security vehicle with his car and then “accelerated toward a Border Police officer.”. Police say officers opened fire at the car and that no Israeli forces were harmed.

Police said the driver was taken to hospital and died there. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death, and identified the him as 27-year-old Omar Hassan al-Awawdeh.

#شاهد.. جانب من وداع الشهيد عمر العواودة الذي ارتقى بعد إصابته برصاص الاحتلال في بلدة إذنا غرب الخليل، صباح اليوم. pic.twitter.com/PgDMbk2p29

— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) December 11, 2018

In a separate incident in the village of al-Jiftlik, in the northern Jordan Valley, a Palestinian man allegedly accelerated his car toward a group of Border Police officers. The troops fired warning shots into the air, and the suspect stopped and was arrested, police said.

The suspect was identified as a 30-year-old resident of the village.

Both incidents were being investigated.

The incidents come as Israeli troops are conducting a manhunt for suspects who shot and wounded seven Israelis outside a Jewish settlement this week, including a pregnant 21-year-old whose baby was prematurely delivered by cesarean section after the attack. The baby remains in critical condition.

Following that attack, the military carried out a series of raids in the West Bank city of Ramallah, bursting into stores and the offices of the official Palestinian news agency.

Security forces are also still searching for a Palestinian who killed two Israelis in an attack at a West Bank industrial zone in October.

Speaking Tuesday at the opening of an interchange near an Israeli settlement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned this week’s shooting and promised to “hunt down those responsible for the attack and make them pay.”

Netanyahu said the attackers intended to push Israel out of the West Bank but that Israel would deepen its ties to the territory under his leadership.

“As long as I am prime minister, not even one Jew will be uprooted from his home. Not only will they not be uprooted from their homes, they will build more homes,” he said at the event, about a half-hour’s drive from the site of Sunday’s shooting.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 war. Some 600,000 Jews currently live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

(YWN / AP)