Israeli soldier wounded in West Bank terrorist attack

An Israeli soldier was seriously wounded in a terrorist attack in the West Bank amid a major escalation that pushed the volume of such incidents to its highest level since 2014.

An assailant threw a rock at the soldier’s head near the settlement of Beit El on Friday morning, causing him massive trauma and then stabbing him, the Israel Broadcasting Corp. reported. The assailant then fled the scene and is being searched after.

On Thursday, two soldiers, Yuval Mor Yossef and Yossef Cohen, were killed in a shooting attack that seriously injured another two Israelis. On Sunday, seven people were wounded in another shooting attack near Ofra. One of the victims was a pregnant mother whose baby was prematurely delivered following the attack but died two days later.

In November, the Israel Security Agency recorded 645 terrorist attacks, a near doubling over October and the highest tally on record since August 2014, when Israel fought Hamas in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. Most of the attacks in November were the launching of rockets into Israel from Gaza, the agency’s report for November said.

The November tally is more than four times higher than the monthly average over the past four years and slightly higher than the 620 incidents recorded in October 2015. That month was the bloodiest of a period that some Palestinians called “the Al-Aqsa Intifada.”