One of the injured is taken to hospital in serious condition with a neck wound

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A Palestinian man stabbed two Israeli soldiers at a road junction in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday morning before being shot dead.

One of the injured is a 20-year-old who was reported to be in a serious condition with a neck wound and was taken to a Jerusalem hospital by helicopter.

The incident took place at about 10am in the northern West Bank.

A second soldier, also reported to be in his early 20s, was lightly injured in his back and is reported to have shot dead the Palestinian.

The incident took place on route 60, the main road linking the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nablus, near the entrance to the settlement of Ma’ale Levona. Israel’s emergency services confirmed that paramedics had responded to a call about a stabbing near the settlement.

“Paramedics are transferring a young man of around 20 to [Jerusalem’s] Shaare Zedek hospital in serious condition with a stab wound to his upper body,” a statement said.

The two soldiers were reportedly members of a military medical unit deployed as part of reinforcements in the area during the Passover holiday and were sitting in an ambulance at the time of the attack.

Israel experienced a wave of similar attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem towards the end of last year, but the violence has mostly subsided and the current Passover holiday has been relatively quiet thus far.

Palestinians demand the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, as part of their future state and object to an Israeli presence there. Militants often target soldiers and Jewish settlers.

• This article was amended on 9 April 2015. An earlier version described the attacker as a Palestinian youth. He was originally described as such locally; he was later identified as 27-year-old Muhammad Jaser Karakara.