Two Israelis wounded in second West Bank shooting attack in two days
Hamas claims responsibility for both Wednesday and Tuesday's shooting attacks, saying they are in response 'to crimes of Israeli occupation.'
By Haaretz Service, Natasha Mozgovaya and News Agencies Tags: Israel news West Bank Hamas Middle East peaceTwo Israelis were wounded, one seriously, on Wednesday night in a shooting attack in the West Bank, one day after a similar attack left four Israeli civilians dead.
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Israel police and IDF troops at the scene of the West Bank shooting on Sept. 1, 2010. |
| Photo by: Emil Salman |
The attack on Wednesday occurred at Rimonim Junction, near the Israeli settlement of Kochav Hashachar and east of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Around 11 p.m., there were reports of a shooting in the Rimonim Junction area, and a car was found overturned after police and emergency crews conducted sweeps of the area.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Palestinian gunmen ambushed the Israeli car, which was riddled with bullets, he said. Police are reported to have found 20 bullets, which were unloaded into the car which was attacked.
Preliminary reports said the attack was a drive-by shooting, executed in a similar fashion to Tuesday's attack. IDF troops are continuing to scour the area for the assailants.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for both Tuesday and Wednesday's attacks and have vowed that more attacks would come.
The group said in a short SMS message sent to reporters on Wednesday that its militants opened fire at an Israeli car and wounded two Israelis, one of them seriously.
"This attack is a message to those who promised that Hebron attack, which was carried out on Tuesday, won't be repeated again," said the group's SMS message.
Abu Obeida, the spokesman for the Hamas armed wing in the Gaza Strip, said in a news briefing that the second attack in the West Bank comes "in the frame of the response to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation."
The victims are a couple, both in their 30s. One of the victims of the attack has been identified as Moshe Moreno, who is a rabbi for a pre-army program in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Efrayim. He is listed as in serious condition. His wife, who was riding in the car with him, was also lightly injured in the attack.
An Israeli woman was killed near the same junction in 2002 when a terrorist shot at her car as she drove on a nearby road.
The attack on Wednesday was the second shooting in as many days against Israelis in the West Bank, and comes on the eve of the start of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington on Thursday.
A senior U.S. State Department official said about that the attack on Wednesday, "this kind of savage brutality has no place in any country, under any circumstances."
The president of Egypt's spokesman, Ambassador Suleiman Awad sent his condolences to victims of both Wednesday and Tuesday's attacks. Despite Hamas claiming responsibility for Tuesday's attack, Awad said Egypt "will not give up on Hamas."
"We’ve tried for several months to strike a deal with regard to Shalit and the Palestinians' division – but Mashal, who stays in Damascus, receives lots of money from Iran, they have their private agenda instead of pursuing the Palestinian agenda," Awad said, referring to Hamas leader in Syria Khaled Mashaal.
U.S. President Obama, meanwhile, earlier Wednesday described the fatal shooting one day earlier as a senseless slaughter that will not stop the U.S. from seeking peace in the Middle East.
"There are going to be extremists and rejectionists who, rather than seeking peace, are going to be seeking destruction, and the tragedy that we saw yesterday, where people were gunned down on the street by terrorists who are purposely trying to undermine these talks, is an example of what we're up against," Obama said.
Netanyahu applauded Obama's condemnation of Tuesday's killing, and said such attacks are carried out by people "who do not respect human life and who trample human rights into the dust and butcher everything they oppose."
Israeli settlers in the West Bank also on Wednesday said they would break a government freeze on construction in their communities to protest the Palestinian shooting attack on the eve of new peace talks.
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Your settlers are the line of defense. Take care of Iran.
Netenyahu should cancell the talks untill the pals have sorted themselves out
Peace talks must continue and we should all pray that Bibi & Abbas have the courage to compromise.
This is obviously a crucial time... a time to excercise restraint in order to give peace a chance. However, how do these acts of terrorism go unpunished? As Hamas has claimed responsibility do you go after the leaders in the Gaza Strip or try and find the terrorists in the West bank? Peace with Abbas looks possible however involving Hamas, people who dont value human life may well be too difficult. Palestinians will pay the price for voting these animals in...
It highlights peace without security is untenable.
How do they expect peace to come if they can not control their own?
Hamas and those who are opposing peace are getting desperate , killing unarmed civilians ? whats next , missile attacks , ? probably ,
Traveling outside your country can be hazardous to your health. As well as building your house there...
and renew targeted assasinations of Hams leaders.
are throwing candies and cakes at each other now. And Hamas's brave fighters and leaders are digging their bunkers a little deeper.
Hamas claimed responsibility. Nothing new. They dont' want the hated PA to deliver peace for the Palestinians. Just goes to show the Palestinians hate each other as much as they hate the Israelis.
There has to be immediate and harsh IDF reprisal after each and every attack. Nothing was done yesterday, and now we have more civilian casualties. Please get serious and destroy the enemy beasts. Talk of peace is just hot air. We have to hit the enemy so hard they will never be able to do this or think about doing this ever again. Didn't we once have a motto "NEVER AGAIN"? Why is this happening over and over? BB come back to Israel immediately and unleash the IDF to stop this terrorism once and for all!
Killed and wounded shall Israel have to suffer before these senseless talks that shall surely fail again are stopped? Has history thought you nothing all these decades? One can not negotiate with murderers nor with those that continue all these years to only idolise and teach violence like the entire palestinian arab leadership has done. The men of words are as guilty as the men of deeds.
When you don't inspect the vehicles, you won't deter and catch those murderers. The IDF should deal their operators who are sitting behind a desk in Gaza.
Have peace talks as if there were no Hamas attacks, and pound Hamas as if there were no peace talks.
Netanyahu = Pot calling kettle black. It should be in the Oxford dictionary. Straight up.
What breaks my heart even more? The settlers' response.
the world is once again mute to jews being murdered..
Put back all the roadblocks now. And tell Netanyahu to get his butt back to Israel immediately. Does he not understand that his country is under seige?
because there is no way this just started to happen, there is something sinister going on, i can smell it.
The only solution is for Israel and the PLO to declare war against Hamas. I am not talking about rhetoric but a physical take over of Gaza and a dismantling of Hamas in the West Bank. If the PLO doesn't join us, in the near future, we are all doomed.
As they proved in the last few days with the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians, including a pregnant woman, Hamas is not a Palestinian group. It is an Iranian Islamic terror cell first and foremost and Palestinian second. Islamic terrorism is inspired by warped Islamic teachings. We can never get rid of it unless we defeat the twisted ideology behind it. As long as Israel exists and as long as there is a Jewish presence in Israel, there will be conflict. It doesn't matter what Israel does or what concessions it makes, none of it matters. Eventually, like any rabid dog, Hamas will have to be put down.
Sooner or later Israel will have to crush the Settler movement or start eradicating the Palestinians. The settlements were a catastrophic mistake for Israel and one which has cost immense sums and many lives.
it seems like the iranian - syiran - terror axis really belives they could defeat israel... i wonder what will come on September 2nd? Thats the day where the direct peace talks offically will be kicked of in washington. i wonder why iran is so much against a peace deal? what reasons are there behind the scene? we all know...PEACE would make hisbullah and hamas and any ohter hatred against israelis OBSOLETE! after that all the dirty lies and plans of the past decades will pop out of the ground like mushrooms! we'll see who did what when and why by which order!!!!!!!! that is the real reason against peace...IRAN and SYRIA have a lot of things to HIDE!
Settlers must leave the occupied territories, they don't belong their. The pals have all the right to defend their land and homes like any other free nation.
merely said that they are not in the interest of the Palestinian people? Its monstrous and twisted that Palestinians would think that killing civilians is "normal" even if one accepts, which I do not, that Israels occupation of the West Bank is unlawful. That is not a reason to kill civilians. It may be a reason to fight the military. Were the Palestinian notion of "normal" be accepted, the world would be an even sorrier and bloody place than it already is. Hamas notion of normal is disgusting and demented. And all the more so given that the occupation was the outcome of an unprovoked attack on Israel seeking to terminate her and subsequent refusals of Palestinians and the entire Arab world to recognize Israel and peacefully negotiate the terms of Israel's withdrawal. Sadly, Israel must both negotiate peace and fight those that seek to kill her citizens. One of the things that is missing in Obama's take of events is the celebrations of Pals for killing Jews. Obama and others think this is only about disrupting peace talks, which it no doubt is, but its also an expression of the vile hatred of Jews and the single "minded" dedication of much of that world to do whatever can be done to liquidate us. If your sceptical, see the following clip of a "progressive" Kuwait Professor. http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0861ff3eabea1ceb73e4&sp=2
and Hamas was doing it always. Al-ways. Peace means for them evaporation of their raison d'etre, which is capitalizing on hate. That's why they are so nervous especially now. Dear Israelis, I am so much with you now...
There now we got it right.
He should fix what his "confidence building measures" have destroyed.