Israeli troops killed a Palestinian man near the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, after the man tried to attack a soldier at a military outpost, the Israeli army said.

The incident is the latest in a series of similar episodes that have occurred almost daily over the past year as tensions in the occupied West Bank have flared, bringing the worst levels of violence in the area in more than a decade.

The Palestinian health ministry said the man was a 25-year-old from the city of Jenin but gave no other details.

The Israeli army said the man got out of a car and approached a military outpost near a brigade headquarters, despite being warned off by soldiers who shouted and fired into the air. He attempted to attack one of the soldiers before being shot by another soldier, a statement said.

In a separate incident, the army said an Israeli vehicle was fired on near the city of Rawabi, north of Ramallah but no injuries were reported.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday fired an aide who said he wouldn’t want to live next to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender couples and warned that people would flee Japan if same-sex marriage was permitted.

In remarks reported by local media, Masayoshi Arai, an economy and trade official who joined Kishida’s staff as a secretary in October, added he did not even want to look at same-sex couples.

“His comments are outrageous and completely incompatible with the administration’s policies,” Kishida said in remarks aired by public broadcaster NHK.

Speaking to reporters later in the day, the Japanese leader said he had dismissed Arai, who had earlier apologized for “misleading” comments made on Friday.

Arai’s comments had come after Kishida had said in parliament that same-sex marriage needed careful consideration because of its potential impact on the family structure.

The incident is an embarrassment for Kishida as he prepares to host other leaders from Group of Seven nations in May. Unlike Japan, which has been ruled by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for most of the past seven decades, the rest of the G7 allow marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples.

According to recent opinion polls, Kishida’s public support has halved to around 30% since last year following a series of scandal-tainted resignations by senior officials.

Among those who stepped down was Mio Sugita, an internal affairs and communications vice minister, who quit in December over controversial comments about LGBT people, and about Japan’s indigenous Ainu community.

In a survey published by NHK in July 2021, two months before Kishida became prime minister, 57% of 1,508 respondents said they supported the legal recognition of same-sex unions.

Because they are not allowed to marry, same-sex couples can’t inherit each other’s assets and are denied parental rights to each other’s children.

In November, a Tokyo court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage, but also said a lack of legal protection for same-sex families violated their human rights.

(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 6)

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