File photo of Israeli forces in the Tel Aviv-occupied West Bank

Ramallah, October 30 (RHC)-- Four Israelis and a Palestinian have been wounded in a gun attack near an Israeli checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron) with the gunman reported shot dead by the occupying forces.

The shooting on Saturday came amid the persisting revolt by native Palestinians in the occupied West bank and just days ahead of the Israeli regime’s fifth election in less than four years, with local news outlets citing Tel Aviv’s army as saying that the unidentified attacker “shot live fire” at the checkpoint in al-Khalil, also home to a community of radical Zionist settlers.

"Soldiers are conducting searches in the area" for additional suspects, the occupying army added, noting that the attacker was shot dead at the scene.  A 50-year-old Israeli man was "unconscious with an injury to his upper body," said the Israeli regime's Magen David Adom emergency response service, adding that the rest of the casualties had suffered less severe injuries.

The Palestinian Red Crescent also announced that the Palestinian victim was receiving treatment at a local hospital.  This is while the Israeli regime’s extreme-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose “Religious Zionism” alliance is vying for major gains in Tuesday’s polls, claimed in a Twitter post that his residence was the target of the shooting attack.

An army spokesperson told AFP that an Israeli guard had shot the attacker dead at the scene.  The reported attack came amid heavily intensified Israeli raids throughout the West Bank in search of alleged Palestinian gunmen responsible for a spate of deadly attacks on Israeli forces by Palestinian resistance forces – which began in March.

More than 100 Palestinians have so far been killed during the Israeli regime’s brutal crackdown on West Bank’s native residents.  Meanwhile, the United Nations special coordinator for "the Middle East Peace Process," Tor Wennesland, insisted that this year is on track to be the deadliest in the occupied territory in more than a decade, further warning that the West Bank was "caught in a downward spiral" of bloodshed.

Wennesland further emphasized that "2022 is on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs began systematically tracking Palestinian fatalities in 2005.”

The UN envoy expressed alarm at the intensity of the escalation in the West Bank, and deplored the fact that Palestinian children continued to fall victim to clashes between resistance and occupation forces.

"Near-daily instances of violence, [are] unfolding against a backdrop of unabated Israeli settlement expansion, evictions of Palestinians and home demolitions,” Wennesland further underlined.

The Israeli regime occupied and annexed the West Bank, including East al-Quds, in a heavily-Western-backed war of aggression in 1967.

Ever since, it has dotted the territory with hundreds of illegal settlements that have come to house hundreds of thousands of Zionist settlers that immigrated to the occupied Palestine – mostly from Europe and the United States.  Earlier, Tor Wennesland, the United Nations special coordinator for "the Middle East Peace Process," said this year had been the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in around two decades.