Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian brandishing a pipe bomb at a West Bank checkpoint today, the army said.
An army spokesman said the man leapt from a taxi and ran towards the checkpoint holding the device, shouted in a threatening manner and refused calls to stop before being shot.
"As well as the pipe bomb, troops later found a second device on the man's body," the spokesman added.
Palestinian ambulance workers waiting nearby to try to treat the man said the troops had kept them away for more than two hours. An army spokeswoman said they were kept at a distance until the explosive devices had been deactivated.
The incident occurred at the same checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus where soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man holding a glass bottle last weekend.
Violence in the occupied West Bank has largely tapered off in the past few years as a result of tighter security measures and cooperation between Israel and foreign-trained Palestinian police.
But tension has surged in the past week, coinciding with a deepening deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
Yesterday, Israeli soldiers killed a 65-year-old Palestinian in his bedroom during a pre-dawn raid to seize a Hamas suspect who lived in the same building. The army admitted several hours later that the killing was a mistake.
On New Year’s Eve, a Palestinian woman died following a protest against an Israeli barrier built across the West Bank. A local medic said the woman died after inhaling tear gas.