An Israeli soldier on Sunday shot dead a Palestinian suspected of attempting an attack on troops in the Gush Etzion area of the occupied West Bank., the Israeli army said.

"A knife attack was reported at the Gush Etzion junction, south of Bethlehem," the army said in a statement. "The attacker was neutralised." The attacker "is dead," the army told Agence France-Presse (AFP), confirming that the military had killed the assailant. No soldiers were hurt.

Gush Etzion is a bloc of two dozen illegal Israeli settlements and outposts near Bethlehem. There is frequent friction at the nearby junction, which has been the site of numerous so-called lone-wolf Palestinian attacks. Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War.

There are currently about 475,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, considered illegal by most of the international community, alongside some 2.8 million Palestinians. International rights groups have repeatedly condemned the Israeli occupation, labeling it as an "apartheid."

Video shared on social media shows a man in a gray sweatshirt walking along the side of a highway. He appears to pull something out of his clothes and begins to run toward a soldier. The soldier appears to fire his weapon, and the man collapses.

Palestinian and Israeli rights groups have accused Israel of using excessive force in some instances and of killing some suspected attackers who could have been apprehended.