A lone Palestinian sniper, 22-year-old Tha'ir Kayid Hammad (Arabic: ثائر كايد حمّاد), a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades from the village of Silwad carried out the attack.
He had acquired an old World War II-era M1 Garand rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition and had done target practice in the valleys around Silwad.
Hammad managed to kill seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians before his rifle exploded while firing his 25th shot, forcing him to give up and escape.
[1] The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was maintaining a checkpoint at Uyoun al-Haramiya (the Wells of Haramiya), near the Israeli settlement Ofra, manned by a reserve company.
Platoon commander Lieutenant David Damelin and the unit's medic Yochai Porat emerged from the building to locate the shooter and assist the casualties.
[2] Tha'ir Hammad claimed in an interview (obtained by unknown means from prison) that the Israelis were armed and that one of them took aim at him but that he shot first.
He also claimed that he refrained from harming an Israeli woman and her children, shouting at her in Hebrew and Arabic to leave the area.
"[8] A series of investigations were carried out with the apparent purpose of exonerating the senior officers and putting the full blame on the soldiers at the checkpoint.
In 2015, he was put in solitary confinement after issuing a statement calling for Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem to revolt over Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa.