A 19-year-old Israeli soldier was stabbed to death this morning on an Israeli bus by a 16-year-old Palestinian terrorist, sustaining several wounds to his neck and chest and eventually succumbing to his injuries after being admitted to to a hospital.

Israel Defense Forces soldier Eden Atias, 19, from Nazareth Illit, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager Wednesday in the northern Israeli city of Afula. The Shin Bet and the Israel Police have launched a joint investigation into the incident, which has been labeled a terror attack.

The attack took place around 8:30 a.m. aboard the 823 Egged bus from Nazareth Illit to Tel Aviv. The assailant, identified as 16-year-old Hussein Jawadra from Jenin, who authorities say was residing in Israel illegally, attacked Atias when the bus came to a stop, stabbing him multiple times.

In what one Twitter commenter described as “affirmation,” the Twitter channel of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades posted a childhood picture of the murdered Israeli teenager. The attack comes amid both concentrated efforts by Hamas to rebuild its terror infrastructure in the West Bank – the Palestinian terror group has been largely stymied in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, and so may be shifting its focus to the territory – and a wave of incitement by Hamas’s rival, the Palestinian Fatah faction.

The Jerusalem Post today published security assessments from Israeli intelligence officials:

Although the IDF is working hard to disrupt the arms flow in areas of Hebron, overall the city remains heavily armed, and there is an elevated risk of armed terror attacks, an intelligence officer from the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion told The Jerusalem Post this week.

Israeli soldiers last week seized a large cache of ammunition and arrested two Palestinians on security charges in the area. An unnamed intelligence officer told the Post that the cache represented only “a small drop in the bucket” of arms flowing through the Hebron region.

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