RAMALLAH UNDER SIEGE AFTER KILLING OF TWO ISRAELIS
▶ Army seals city’s entrances and exits after Palestinian gunman shoots four people near site of a similar attack
Two Israelis were killed and two wounded after a Palestinian gunman opened fire outside a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Thursday morning.
Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, praised the attack, calling it heroic, but did not claim responsibility for the drive-by shooting. It is not yet known who carried out the attack near Ofra, an Israeli settlement where a similar attack claimed by Hamas occurred on Sunday.
The majority of the international community considers these Israeli settlements illegal under international law.
The gunman opened fire at a bus stop near Asaf Junction, north of Jerusalem, the Israeli military said in a tweet, promising to find the perpetrator.
“Our forces comb the space for the terrorists who have fled the scene and are checking all the entrances and exits,” the Israeli security service said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service said four people were in critical condition after the incident and pictures showed Israeli medics removing the injured.
Four hitchhikers in their early 20s were shot along the highway near the Ofra settlement.
The gunman opened fire from his car, fleeing the scene immediately afterwards, reports said.
One of the wounded was in a critical condition, and the second, a woman, was seriously injured, the ambulance service said. After the attack, the Israeli army surrounded the nearby city of Ramallah, home to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The city’s entrances and exits were sealed and the army entered several neighbourhoods, AFP reported.
On Sunday, a Palestinian gunman wounded seven people in a separate attack, which Hamas described as a heroic reaction to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. One of the victims was a pregnant woman whose baby later died.
“The heroic Ofra operation is an affirmation of our people’s choice and legitimacy in resisting the Zionist occupation and its settlers,” Abdelatif Al Qanou, a Hamas spokesman, posted on his Facebook page.
On Wednesday, Israel security forces shot dead a Palestinian suspected of being connected to the shooting of the seven Israelis. The Shin Bet security service said that Salah Omar Barghouti – who tried to evade capture during a raid on a West Bank village – was shot and killed.
Shin Bet did not say if Barghouti was suspected of being the gunman or an accomplice.
It said an unspecified number of other people were arrested.
Palestinians have carried out a series of attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and Jerusalem in retaliation for what they say is daily humiliation at the hands of a military occupation that restricts their movements, impinges on their freedoms and fails to enact justice for crimes against Palestinians.
The Shin Bet announcement came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that those who carried out Sunday’s drive-by shooting would be found and brought to justice. In response to the attack on Sunday, Israel’s hardright nationalist Jewish Home party called for the legalisation of settlement homes in Ofra and for it to be made a regular Israeli town, despite its location in the West Bank.
Israeli outposts are home to more than 400,000 Jewish citizens in the occupied territory.
Ofra, home to 3,500 settlers, was built on private Palestinian land that Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The attacks have sparked fears of a tit-for-tat escalation in the West Bank.
A similar escalation of violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank led to the previous war between the rulers of Gaza and Israel in 2014.