Palestinian opens fire on West Bank road, none hurt

A Palestinian man opened fire on vehicles traveling on Route 55 in the northern West Bank on Thursday afternoon, the IDF said. No one was hurt in the attack.

A bullet casing was found at the site, which lies near the village of Azzun east of the Palestinian city of Qalqilya.

IDF forces "are searching the area for the suspect," the army said in a statement.

The incident continues a sharp spike in violence in the West Bank in recent days.

An IDF soldier was lightly wounded in clashes between troops and residents in the West Bank city of Jenin early Thursday morning, the army said.

During the fighting, Palestinians fired gunshots and threw Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs at the troops, who opened fire at their attackers, the army said. It was not immediately clear which side caused the soldier's wounds.

The soldier received treatment on the scene and was then taken to a nearby hospital for further treatment. The army entered the Palestinian city's refugee camp to conduct an arrest raid when they came under attack by local residents.

During the operation, the IDF picked up two suspected Hamas members - brothers Muhammad and Ahmed As'ad Abu Khalifa, according to Palestinian media.

Overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning, the army conducted a number of operations throughout the West Bank, including a crackdown on the manufacturing of illegal weapons in the city of Hebron, the army said. In the village of Aboud, northwest of Ramallah, the IDF also collected evidence from the home of a Palestinian man - identified by Palestinian media as Raed Omar Nizar Barghouti - who opened fire on an army post earlier in the evening, the army said.

Small-scale fighting was reported during an arrest raid in the Deheishe refugee camp outside Bethlehem.

The clashes broke out after IDF troops moved into the city to pick up two residents, Palestinian media reported.

In Hebron, the army shuttered a workshop that is believed to have been used to craft makeshift guns, the army said.

Eight pieces of machinery, including drill presses and lathes, were confiscated during the operation. "This operation represents just one of many operations being conducted in the Judea region each night to seize workshops and weapons," the army said in a statement.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers picked up five more Palestinian suspects, four of them for rock-throwing.

The fifth, who was arrested in al-Hashimia, north of Jenin, was suspected of being a member of the Hamas terrorist organization, the army said.

Earlier on Wednesday night, Barghouti shot at an army position outside Aboud from a passing car. IDF troops fired back, wounding him. He received medical treatment on the scene before being taken to a nearby hospital, the army said.

Barghouti's attack came hours after IDF troops shot dead a Palestinian man who rammed his car into a West Bank bus stop north of Jerusalem on Wednesday evening.

The Israeli civilians and soldiers who were standing at the bus stop were uninjured. According to the army, the driver crashed his truck into the metal bollards surrounding a bus stop near the Kochav Yaakov settlement in the central West Bank, southeast of Ramallah.

Upon searching the car, the soldiers found the driver to be holding a knife, the military said.

Car-ramming and knife attacks have been a fixture of a swell of deadly violence in Israel and the West Bank over the past 18 months, and sporadic attacks have persisted even as the wave of violence has somewhat subsided in recent months.