Later, a government official conceded that the unit had been on a deliberate mission seeking out what the army believed was a squad from "Force 17", the Palestinian presidential guard, which the Israelis claim had been using the checkpoint as cover from which to fire on nearby Israeli positions.
In at least one of the attacks, police officers tried to stop the vehicle at a checkpoint and fired on it, causing it to swerve into a wall and explode, wounding 11 people, including two police officers.
It said that soldiers at the checkpoint had fired in the air to stop the vehicle, but that the president was engaged in conversation with his passenger — his cousin — and ignored the warning.
In a separate incident, military officials said Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip apprehended a Palestinian man dressed as a woman, complete with Islamic head covering and gloves, as he tried to cross a military checkpoint after firing toward a Jewish settlement.
In Friday's attack, near a government checkpoint, gunmen fired on a convoy of Rwandan peacekeepers escorting a water tanker near the northern town of Saraf Umra.
"They are just young students, and they don't know anything!" Theft also continued to be a problem; at one checkpoint, security guards fired a gun in the air to discourage young men on motorcycles from swerving off the highway out into the desert to avoid being stopped.
It first said the car bomb was "intercepted" at a Hezbollah checkpoint and exploded after members of the checkpoint fired on it.
Near the town of Makatikha, several kilometers north of Slovyansk, pro-Russian militia at checkpoints set fire to barricades of car tires in an apparent attempt to reduce visibility from the air.
Just ahead, an Iraqi soldier at a checkpoint fired his gun in the air, apparently as a rebuke to an ornery driver.
Others wandered aimlessly around the Bin Jawwad checkpoint, firing guns in the air, this time, out of frustration, or boredom.
