Motives murky in West Bank attack

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian attacker on Sunday opened fire inside a West Bank industrial zone where Israelis and Palestinians work together, killing two Israelis and seriously wounding a third.

The Israeli military said it was treating the killings as a nationalistic attack and that forces were searching for the suspect late Sunday. But other workers suggested the attack had been carried out by a disgruntled employee and was not politically motivated.

The shooting took place early Sunday in the Barkan industrial zone, near the large Israeli settlement of Ariel. Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians work side by side at the industrial zone, which has 160 factories.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the preliminary finding was that a 23-year-old man from a nearby village had carried out the attack. Conricus said the suspect was not known to authorities and was not believed to belong to a Palestinian militant group.

The Israeli military later named the suspect as Ashraf Na’alwa. Israeli security forces searched Na’alwa’s home village near the West Bank city of Tulkarem and arrested several Palestinians suspected of assisting the suspect.

One of the victims was identified as Kim Yehezkel, a 28-year-old mother of an infant son, who worked in the office that was attacked. The second was named as Ziv Hajbi, 35.

AP/MAJDI MOHAMMED Palestinians wait at an Israeli checkpoint near the scene of an attack at Barkan industrial zone in the West Bank, on Sunday.