Twenty-two-year-old Israeli soldier Staff Sgt. Asil Sawaed died on Monday evening from wounds sustained earlier in the day in a terrorist attack at a checkpoint to Shuafat in eastern Jerusalem.
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A 13-year-old Arab assailant stabbed Sawaed after he and a civilian guard had boarded a bus during a routine inspection at the checkpoint, police said. The guard then opened fire at the suspect, accidentally hitting Sawaed. He was evacuated to Hadassah Medical Center with stab wounds to the head and a bullet wound to the thigh, according to reports, where he was pronounced dead. The terrorist was subsequently arrested.
It came just hours after a teenager was stabbed and lightly to moderately injured in a terrorist attack in the Old City of Jerusalem. Magen David Adom said its personnel treated a fully conscious 17-year-old male near the Western Wall, who was stabbed at the Chain Gate entrance to the Temple Mount. The victim was taken in stable condition to the city's Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center.
Security forces arrested the terrorist, who had fled the scene and was found hiding atop the Temple Mount.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the governing coalition would this week pass legislation in the Knesset to strip the citizenship of terrorists and expel them from the country.
The prime minister's declaration comes after 6-year-old Yaakov Israel Paley and 20-year-old Alter Shlomo Lederman were killed on Friday when they were run over by an Arab Israeli driver in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood. Eight-year-old Asher Menachem Paley, Yaakov's brother, died over Shabbat from wounds sustained in the attack.
Meanwhile, Israeli security forces arrested overnight Tuesday 23 suspected terrorists and confiscated ammunition in a number of raids throughout the West Bank as part of the "Operation Breakwater" anti-terrorism campaign.
During the night, shots were fired from a passing vehicle at an Israeli checkpoint in central West Bank. No soldiers were hurt. Searches in the area turned up discarded backpacks containing ammo.
JNS.org and i24NEWS contributed to this report.
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