Israel arrests Palestinian teen over Jerusalem shooting
Jerusalem, Apr 19 (EFE).- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Wednesday it had arrested a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank for allegedly wounding two Israelis after opening fire on a vehicle in Jerusalem.
In a night-time operation in Nablus city, located in the north of the West Bank that is a stronghold of several Palestinian militias, Israeli forces arrested a person suspected of carrying out the shooting in Jerusalem, the IDF said in a statement.
The operation was conducted together with the Shin Bet, the country’s security agency.
The suspect “is a minor” who accepted his involvement in the incident during the initial interrogation, the IDF said, adding that he was a resident of Askar, a refugee camp near Nablus, an area where new Palestinian resistance militias have emerged in the last year.
On Tuesday, two Israeli men were injured by gunfire in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, where nationalist Jews have tried to evict Palestinian residents in legal battles for decades.
Videos circulating online, apparently filmed by a surveillance camera at the scene of the attack, show a person dressed in black approaching a car, opening fire at point-blank range, and running away.
According to Israeli media, the teenager went to his school in the West Bank after these events, although it is not clear how he crossed without being intercepted at the checkpoints.
In another operation on Tuesday, the IDF raided the Jenin refugee camp, another militia stronghold in the northern West Bank, capturing three Palestinians suspected of being involved in “extensive terrorist activities.”
The detainees were identified as Karim Ala Edin Ibrahim Ahmed, Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed Jardat and Amjad Muhammad Ahmed Jardat, whom the IDF accused of being engaged in “shooting attacks, explosives and promoting other attacks.”
During the operation in Jenin, “armed men shot and threw explosives at the (Israeli) forces, who responded by shooting,” the IDF added.
No Israeli troops were injured in the operation, according to the IDF.
On the Palestinian side, eight people were injured by gunfire, according to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry.
Among them is a 68-year-old woman and a paramedic, as the Israelis fired on an ambulance to prevent Red Crescent personnel from entering the camp to tend to the wounded, official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
On Tuesday, the IDF arrested a Palestinian who allegedly tried to grab a gun from a civilian security guard at a checkpoint in the West Bank, and on Monday, a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man at the entrance to Jewish settlement, also in the West Bank.
These incidents occur in the midst of escalated tensions in the region.
Nineteen Israelis, most of them settlers living in the Occupied Territories, have died in Palestinian attacks so far this year, while Israeli forces have killed 98 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians. EFE
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