ISRAELI occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian resistance fighter at a military checkpoint in the West Bank on Saturday.

This comes as settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village, hurling stones, spraying bullets and setting fire to homes in the latest in a series of attacks this week.

According to Israeli police, the killed, and as yet unnamed, Palestinian resistance fighter approached Israeli troops stationed at the Qalandiya checkpoint outside Jerusalem early in the morning, pulled out an M16 rifle and opened fire.

Israeli security forces said they shot back, killing the suspected assailant. 

According to the Israeli rescue service, two security guards in their 20s were hospitalised with minor wounds. 

Later on Saturday, residents of the Palestinian village of Umm Safa said that some 50 Israeli settlers, armed with rifles and flammable liquid, stormed through the streets and tried to set fire to at least five homes with people inside. 

The Israeli occupation forces said that it sent security forces to the scene and arrested an Israeli citizen.

Palestinian rescue teams said that they evacuated small children who were suffocating and trapped inside a burning house.

Some settlers also opened fire at civilians and medics. Local station Palestine TV said that settlers fired at Mohammed Radi, its correspondent covering the attacks, and showed footage on social media of his shattered camera. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent said that one of its medics was wounded by gunfire.

Another two medics were wounded when settlers threw a large rock at an ambulance, which crashed through the windshield.

Israeli settlers also shot and killed a horse in the village, said resident Ibrahim Ebiat. “This is pure terror,” he said. “People are scared and angry.”

Young Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli occupation forces who fired live rounds tear gas at them, witnesses said. 

The Israeli military said it was “working to disperse the friction.” One soldier was wounded by a thrown stone, it said, denouncing the violence.

Israeli opposition chief Yair Lapid called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “condemn this disgrace and deal with it properly.”

“Settler violence has crossed every line,” he said.

Top Israeli security officials condemned the settler violence late on Saturday.

“They constitute, in every way, nationalist terrorism, and we are obliged to fight them,” Israel’s military chief, police chief and the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency said in a joint statement. 

The events capped a bloody week in the West Bank that left 16 Palestinians and four Israelis dead.