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Two Israeli Soldiers Killed in Second Drive-by Shooting in Five Days

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JERUSALEM, Israel – Two Israeli  soldiers were killed and two others wounded in a terror shooting Thursday. Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the search is on for the terrorists.

"Two people were pronounced dead at the scene and a further two taken to [the] hospital in critical condition. Heightened security is taking place in the area and we will continue to search for the terrorists who carried out the attack. We confirmed it was Palestinian terrorists," Rosenfeld told CBN News.

The attack occurred in biblical Samaria or the West Bank along Highway 60, known as the highway of the biblical patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  


Road of the Patriarchs, Highway 60 in Samaria, Photo, CBN News, Jonathan Goff

On Sunday, a terrorist carried out a similar attack on the same main road about 25 miles away. Seven people were wounded in the earlier attack near the Jewish community of Ofra, including a pregnant woman. Her baby boy, delivered after the attack, died last night.

Rosenfeld said security forces are stepping up measures to meet the challenge.


Israel Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, Photo, CBN News

"We've seen a wave of terrorist attacks, but at the same time an increase, a wave of operations taking place, with the peak of those operations in fact taking place over the last 24 hours," Rosenfeld said. "Our border police units managed to find, target and during gun battles that broke out, two terrorists were shot and killed from two previous terrorist attacks."

One of those terrorists carried out the attack near Ofra earlier this week. The second was from an attack in October at the Barkan Industrial Zone, in which two Israelis were murdered.


Israeli Security Forces Search for  Terrorist, Photo, AP

Also, on Thursday a terrorist stabbed two Border Police officers in Jerusalem's Old City, lightly wounding them. The assailant was shot and killed.

Israeli strategic intelligence and counter-terrorism expert Dr. Barak Ben-Zur said he believes there's another wave of terrorism on the way.

"If we are looking at the recent incidents in the West Bank – because it was in the same area and because we saw that those were squads that used the same modus operandi, we can assume that it's a new wave," Ben-Zur told journalists in a telephone briefing by The Israel Project https://www.theisraelproject.org/.

"It's maybe the same infrastructure and we can take in consideration that those that initiated those terror attacks are approximately the same guys that tried some two months ago to open a new wave of attacks, meaning – the Hamas," Ben-Zur said.
According to Ben-Zur it's part of a new Hamas initiative. "(Hamas) decided to open a new front in the West Bank after a period of time that they (came) to the conclusion they will ease down their efforts from the Gaza Strip."

Hamas has been conducting massive riots and fire kite attacks along Israel's southern border since the spring.  They also ramped up rocket fire twice during the time period on southern Israel.

 

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About The Author

Julie Stahl
Julie
Stahl

Julie Stahl is a correspondent for CBN News in the Middle East. A Hebrew speaker, she has been covering news in Israel full-time for more than 20 years. Julie’s life as a journalist has been intertwined with CBN – first as a graduate student in Journalism, then as a journalist with Middle East Television (METV) when it was owned by CBN from 1989-91, and now with the Middle East Bureau of CBN News in Jerusalem since 2009. As a correspondent for CBN News, Julie has covered Israel’s wars with Gaza, rocket attacks on Israeli communities, stories on the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and the