2 arrested on suspicion of planning car-ramming attack

Two residents of the Arab Israeli city of Kafr Qasim, near the West Bank, were arrested Monday after a police chase on suspicion that they had planned to carry out a car-ramming terror attack in Tel Aviv.

However, an initial investigation indicated that the two did not actually plan an attack.

Police were alerted to the suspects’ alleged plans by a young woman who had been spent time with them on Sunday in a club in the central Israeli city of Herzliya. According to the woman and a friend of hers, one of the two suspects yelled that he intended “to kill Jews, ride on the sidewalk, and run them over,” the Walla news site reported.

Police quickly initiated emergency procedures, set up checkpoints along Route 5, and sent a helicopter to search for the two suspects. They were apprehended following a police chase a short while later, a police spokeswoman said.

Police later said that the woman and her friend presented conflicting accounts of the suspects’ alleged statements, and added that the incident did not seem to have been a planned terror attack.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem’s Old City, police arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian after they discovered a knife in his belongings. According to a police spokeswoman, the teenager was seen “acting suspiciously” by security forces near a Jewish home in the area. A police officer frisked the teenager and found a knife concealed under his clothes.

later, at the Beit Anun Junction near the West Bank city of Hebron , a Palestinian was arrested after a knife was found in his possessions.

In the West Bank overnight Sunday, security forces arrested 16 Palestinian suspects in several operations across the West Bank. All the suspects were transferred to security facilities for interrogation.