Palestinian gunmen wound two soldiers in separate Hebron area terrorist attacks

Arab assailant arrested in attempted stabbing in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF, YAAKOV LAPPIN, DANIEL K. EISENBUD
SECURITY PERSONNEL inspect the scene where a female soldier was shot yesterday in Hebron. (photo credit: REUTERS)
SECURITY PERSONNEL inspect the scene where a female soldier was shot yesterday in Hebron.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The IDF was searching Sunday night for the Palestinians who wounded two soldiers in separate shooting attacks in the Hebron area earlier in the day.
Separately, an unidentified male Palestinian teen was arrested Sunday afternoon for trying to stab a Jew who was waiting at a bus stop in the capital’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood.
The most serious of the three attacks took place around 2 p.m. when a sniper from Hebron’s Abu Sneineh neighborhood moderately wounded a female army cadet as she stood by the main staircase leading from the street to the Cave of the Patriarchs.
She had been on an IDF educational tour of the cave.
The shooting marks an escalation in the attacks against soldiers and Jewish civilians in Hebron, which have largely consisted of stabbings.
Last month, a source from the Ram Battalion, a Home Front Command unit serving with the Etzion Brigade, told The Jerusalem Post that it was preparing for a significant escalation in the severity of West Bank terrorist attacks, such as increased firearms attacks, as well as attempted intrusions by armed assailants into settlements.
The Hebron attack occurred just a short distance from the bus stop where Genady Kaufman, 41, was stabbed in December. He died last week from the knife wounds he sustained in the assault, and his funeral was held on the same street where the cadet was wounded Sunday.
The cadet was hospitalized at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
On Sunday evening, a soldier sustained light wounds from gunfire during a shooting attack at Hakvasim junction, in the South Hebron Hills.
A Palestinian gunman opened fire on soldiers who were checking vehicles at the junction, the army said.
The wounded soldier was evacuated to the hospital, and the army began searching the area.
Also at Hakvasim junction, at the end of December, a 25-year-old Hebron man tried to stab a soldier with a screwdriver at a checkpoint.
Nearby soldiers fatally shot the attacker before he was able to reach them, the army said.
Sunday’s attempted stabbing attack, meanwhile, took place some 200 meters away from the site where three Israeli men were murdered in October by two terrorists from the abutting Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebl Mukaber, according to police.
The unidentified intended male victim in Sunday’s attack was not wounded, as the suspect dropped his knife and fled into the Arab neighborhood, police said.
“The attempted stabbing took place less than 200 meters from where two terrorists killed three men on an Egged bus,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, referring to Haim Haviv, 78, Alon Govberg, 51, and Richard Lakin, 76, who were murdered October 12.
“After receiving a description of the suspect, police searched Jebl Mukaber and found the youth hiding in a courtyard of a house. He remains in custody and was arraigned at Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court,” said Rosenfeld, who added that police continue to patrol the capital at a heightened alert level.