West Bank Man Killed While Apparently Making a Bomb

A Palestinian was killed in an explosion while apparently making a bomb in his West Bank home, an Israeli military source said Saturday.

In a separate incident, Israeli paramilitary border police shot dead the Palestinian driver of a car that tried to run a roadblock near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, a police spokesman said.

Several hours later in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, a Palestinian pulled out a penknife and “lightly scratched” a 20-year-old Israeli during a brawl between Jewish and Arab youths, the spokesman said.

It was not immediately clear what touched off the incident near the scene of a shooting attack on Thursday in which a Jewish seminary student was killed and another wounded.

The military source said a Palestinian chemistry and physics teacher was killed in a blast in the West Bank village of Rafat late Friday. “He was apparently making a bomb,” the source said, identifying the dead man as Badran Abdallah Ahmed Abu Asabah.

Israel Radio described the village as a bastion of the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Israeli soldiers who entered Rafat after hearing the explosion found shrapnel, acetone, batteries and electrical wires near the teacher’s body.

In the West Bank shooting incident, border police opened fire after the driver of a vehicle being chased by police through Jerusalem tried to crash through a roadblock. The driver was killed.

An investigation showed the vehicle’s occupants were “apparently drunk,” police said.