Palestinian shot dead after stabbing Israeli
HEBRON: A Palestinian stabbed a security guard at the entrance to an Israeli settlement and was shot dead yesterday, the army said, in the latest violence in the occupied West Bank. The guard was lightly wounded at the entrance to the Karmei Tzur settlement north of Hebron, the army said in a statement. Another security guard opened fire on the assailant and killed him, it added.
Palestinian security sources named him as Hamza Zamareh, 17, from Halhul, near the scene of the attack. Local residents said that Israeli troops arrived at the family home shortly after the attack and began interrogating relatives, while young villagers hurled stones at the soldiers. The Karmei Tzur attack was the fourth deadly incident in the West Bank since Israeli rabbi Itamar Ben Gal was stabbed to death on Monday near the settlement of Ariel.
In an apparent search for his attacker, Israeli forces raided the West Bank city of Nablus late Tuesday, sparking clashes that left a Palestinian dead. Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli forces shot dead the suspected Palestinian mastermind of a fatal January ambush on another settler rabbi, Raziel Shevach. In a pre-dawn raid on the village of Yamoun, near Jenin, troops shot dead 22year-old suspect Ahmad Jarrar, a member of the militant Islamist group Hamas. The Shin Bet Israeli security agency said that he was armed. Jarrar was the son of a Hamas figure killed by Israeli forces during the second intifada of the early 2000s.
‘Qassam bullet’
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine alQassam Brigades, claimed Jarrar as a member and welcomed the January 9 attack in which Shevach was shot dead in what Israeli media said was a hail of 22 bullets. “Our heroes in the occupied West Bank wrote a heroic epic that made the Zionists lose sleep and put their security establishment on alert,” the Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement. It said a “Qassam bullet” was responsible for the murder, though it was unclear if the Hamas leadership was claiming direct responsibility for the attack or whether the cell acted on its own. Israeli forces had been hunting for the assailants since the murder, with roadblocks and checkpoints set up following the attack. Two Palestinians were killed during earlier raids which Israeli security services said were launched to find Shevach’s killers. — AFP