A US citizen was killed in the West Bank on Monday amid ongoing violence in the region, according to US officials.
The American was killed when a Palestinian gunman opened fire near the West Bank city of Jericho on Monday, hours after Israel deployed hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank amid escalating tensions.
On Sunday, after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli brothers, a large group of settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and cars in the West Bank town of Hawara. One Palestinian was killed in those attacks and dozens were injured, according to medics and the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
“We condemn the horrific murder of two Israeli brothers near Nablus, and the murder today of an Israeli near Jericho who, we understand, was also a US citizen,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said during a briefing on Monday.
“We express our deepest condolences to all the families of the victims and their loved ones,” he added.
The US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, tweeted on Monday that a US citizen was killed “in one of the terror attacks in the West Bank tonight.”
“I pray for his family,” Nides wrote.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed for calm in response to the violence on Sunday, saying: “I ask that when the blood boils and the spirit is hot, you do not take the law into your hands.”
The leader of the opposition Israel Labor Party called the attack by settlers on Sunday a “pogrom by armed militias,” The Associated Press reported.
The violence on Sunday began when a Palestinian gunman shot and killed two brothers from a nearby settlement, Yagel and Hillel Yaniv, while they were in the West Bank town of Hawara. The shooter fled the scene.
Groups of Israeli settlers then set fires and threw stones along a main road in Hawara, setting dozens of cars and buildings on fire.
A Palestinian man, Sameh Hamdallah Mahmoud Aqtash, was killed by an Israeli gunshot on Sunday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. His brother said that an Israeli soldier shot her, but the IDF denied this, according to CBS News.
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