Palestinian killed after ramming car into West Bank checkpoint, Israel says

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian teenager who rammed a car into a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Monday, seriously injuring an Israeli guard, Israel’s defence ministry said.

The incident occurred at a roadblock between Israel and the central West Bank near the Palestinian city of Tulkarem.

Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Israel of “cold-blooded murder”.

He gave no details of his own on what transpired at the checkpoint.

In a statement, the defence ministry said: “At 1:20 a.m., a 16-year-old terrorist rammed his car into a checkpoint and seriously injured one of the security guards.”

Other guards at the scene then quickly opened fire, killing the teenager, it said. The injured guard, the ministry said, was taken to hospital and was expected to survive.

Violence has simmered in the West Bank, part of territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and that Palestinians seek for a future state, since U.S.-sponsored peace talks broke down in 2014.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, Ali Sawafta and Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Angus MacSwan)