Three Israeli Police Officers Killed in the West Bank

Gunmen killed three Israeli police officers on Sunday morning as they drove through the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the latest episode in the spiral of violence in the territory that includes attacks by Palestinian and Israeli extremists, as well as ongoing raids by the Israeli military in Palestinian cities.

The officers were shot and killed as they drove along a highway in the southern part of the West Bank, close to a major checkpoint where traffic is screened before entering Israel, according to statements from the Israeli police and Magen David Adom, the emergency medical service.

One of the officers was the father of a police officer who was killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7 raid on southern Israel that started the war in Gaza, according to the police.

The episode followed two attacks on Friday night by Palestinian militants, one of whom attempted to detonate a car bomb at a busy intersection in the southern West Bank, according to the Israeli military. In the second attack, a Palestinian drove into a nearby Israeli settlement, prompting a car chase and a shootout that caused an explosion in the Palestinian’s car, the military said.

The Israeli military raided three major cities in the northern West Bank last week, killing at least 22 people, according to the Palestinian health authorities. The military said the operation was aimed at quelling armed Palestinian groups, but critics warned that the death and destruction caused by the raids risked encouraging the same violence that they aimed to reduce.

Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 after capturing it from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war that year. Israel has since built hundreds of settlements in the territory, which are considered illegal by most of the world. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis now live under military protection in the West Bank, interspersed among roughly three million Palestinians who generally want the territory to form the backbone of a future Palestinian state.