Pat Dollard

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JERUSALEM – Israeli troops shot dead an apparent would-be Palestinian suicide bomber at a checkpoint near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Monday, the Israeli army said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said troops ordered a man acting suspiciously at the Hawara checkpoint to stop but shot him when he lowered his hands in an apparent attempt to blow himself up.

The spokeswoman said army sappers later detonated five pipe bombs which were placed inside the belt in a controlled explosion at the scene of the shooting.

An Israeli soldier involved in the incident told reporters that it was clear to her that the man was intending to attack the checkpoint.

“There were no other Palestinians in the area when he tried to blow himself up, from his behavior it appeared as if he was not intending to get into Israel but wanted to blow himself up at the checkpoint and attack the soldiers there,” she said in a telephone interview.

A Palestinian security source in Nablus said the person killed was a 16-year-old youth from the village of Beit Furik near the city. Other details were not immediately available.

Israeli troops later entered the village to search for the house of the attacker’s family, local residents said.

Israel frequently carries out strikes and raids in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip aimed at stopping rocket fire into nearby towns and agricultural communities in southern Israel.

Clashes and attacks are not as frequent in the West Bank, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction holds sway.

(Additional reporting by Atef Saad in Nablus, Writing by Ori Lewis)

(Reuters)