Security forces continue hunt for attacker of Israeli girl in Psagot

Investigators focusing on hole in fence surrounding settlement.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Girl on strecher illustrative 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Girl on strecher illustrative 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Security forces continued on Sunday their investigation into the attack on a nine-year-old girl in Psagot, near Ramallah, focusing on a hole in the security fence that surrounds the settlement and footprints thought to be the terrorist’s.
Investigators have yet to draw any conclusions, but the main theory is that a Palestinian terrorist cut a hole in the fence, entered Psagot, came across the girl playing in the yard of her home, and shot her.
“We’re still looking at all the possible directions,” a security source said. “We assume that the hole in the fence and the footprints are linked to the incident.”
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is leading the investigation, while a crime-scene investigation team from Judea and Samaria District police collected forensic findings.
On Sunday evening, Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated the girl, Noam Glick, from her home with a suspected gunshot wound to the upper chest.
She told paramedics that a man had approached her and fired a gun at her.
Shlomo Petrobar, head of Magen David Adom’s Jerusalem District, lives in Psagot and rushed to the home after receiving a report of an injured child, beginning medical treatment within minutes of the attack.
Large numbers of soldiers deployed in the Psagot area overnight to try to capture the terrorist. Soldiers found a toy gun, initially believed to be real and linked to the attack.
The shooting comes days after the Shin Bet released a report noting a sharp increase in terrorist incidents in the West Bank in September.
There were 104 attacks in Judea and Samaria last month, compared with 68 in August. Late last month, two soldiers were killed in separate attacks.
Most of the attacks in September took the form of firebombs.
In the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Palestinians attacked 129 times in September – seven times with bombs, four with small arms fire, and 117 with firebombs.