Police avert terror attack in Hebron

Border policemen averted a terror attack yesterday afternoon at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, when they apprehended an 18-year-old Palestinian armed with two knives, an improvised handgun and a suicide note.

The young man aroused the suspicion of the guards when he first approached the checkpoint but then attempted to avoid the metal detector at the entrance to the complex. A search of his person produced the gun and the two knives, wrapped in paper, and a note reading "this is for the Jewish soldiers." The note, addressed to his father, also said he wanted to die a Hamas activist.

During his interrogation, the teenager revealed that he was from al-Fawar, south of Bethlehem, and did not know the way to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and so he asked passersby where the Jewish soldiers were. The passersby pointed him in the direction of the Tomb.

An Israel Defense Forces official called the young man's ostensible plan to harm soldiers or border policemen "amateurish," and noted that it had not involved any real preparations.

Israeli soldiers yesterday killed a Palestinian gunman, the 23-year-old Mahmoud al-Hajj, during a gunbattle in the Gaza Strip, east of the Al Bureij refugee camp in the central part of the strip.