Terror attack: Palestinian stabs guard at Ma'aleh Adumim, flees scene

After Jerusalem was rocked by 2 terror attacks on Monday, guard stabbed and moderately injured at entrance to West Bank settlement; suspects arrested.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF, JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Suspected terror attack (photo credit: MAGEN DAVID ADOM JERUSALEM)
Suspected terror attack
(photo credit: MAGEN DAVID ADOM JERUSALEM)
Video: Udi Lazar/Tazpit
In the third suspected terror attack in less than 24 hours, a Palestinian man stabbed a security guard at the main entrance to the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement near Jerusalem at around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, and fled the scene.
The guard had stopped the young man and asked to see the contents of a green plastic bag that he held in his hand, according to District Police commander Koby Cohen.
“There was a knife in the bag.
Without taking the knife out of the bag, the Palestinian stabbed the guard in the lower part of his body and immediately fled the scene. The guard still tried to pursue him and shot at him,” Cohen said.
An initial investigation showed that the suspect was picked up by a Palestinian vehicle that sped into a nearby Arab village.
Police soon stopped a suspicious Palestinian vehicle and arrested those inside, but Cohen would not say if the young man who stabbed the guard was among them.
Cohen said they were taken to the police station in Ma’aleh Adumim.
“We are at the start of the investigation, but from the details I have there is a match with the [suspect], including what he wore,” said Cohen, who refused to confirm that the terrorist had been caught.
He did clarify that it was a nationally motivated incident and not a criminal one.
Magen David Adom evacuated the guard to Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem where he was admitted for surgery.
A day earlier, a Palestinian man from east Jerusalem driving an excavator ran over and killed an Israeli man in Jerusalem, then turned the machine on a nearly empty bus, ramming it several times with the scoop. The bus eventually tipped over and the driver was lightly injured.
Following Monday’s incident, the Jerusalem-based Legal Forum for Israel, appealed to the Transportation Ministry to request that as part of the licensing conditions for heavy vehicle operators, security background checks be mandated.
The forum requested that the ministry deny licenses to any candidate who has carried out a security offense, in order to prevent vehicles from becoming “an instrument of destruction.”
Less than three hours after the excavator incident, a soldier was seriously wounded when he was shot in the stomach at a bus stop near the capital’s French Hill neighborhood.
Police said the gunman walked up to the soldier, pulled out a pistol and shot him before fleeing on foot to a waiting motorbike. He was then seen by witnesses fleeing into the Wadi Joz neighborhood.
The soldier was still hospitalized in serious condition on Tuesday and awaiting additional surgery.
There is currently a gag order on the investigation of the shooting, which is ongoing, Mickey Rosenfeld of the Israel Police said Tuesday.