Bus was attacked with ball bearings, not bullets, army says

The IDF said Monday morning that an attack on a bus in the West Bank the night before was not a shooting incident as initially thought, and that damage to the vehicle was caused when it was was struck by ball-bearings.

The projectiles shattered the windshield of the Israeli bus but causing no injuries to those inside. The attack occurred on the Hawara highway, near a Palestinian village by the same name, just south of Nablus.

“In a followup to the incident at Hawara last night, it is evident from findings at the scene and forensic testing that the damage to the bus was caused by steel ball bearings that were apparently not fired from a live weapon,” the army said in a statement.

Overnight Sunday IDF soldiers and border policemen arrested seven wanted suspects in the West Bank, the IDF said.

Three Hamas activists were arrested in Hebron, the army said. Four others were picked up throughout the West Bank for engaging in “popular terrorism” and violent protests, it said. The suspects were all taken for questioning by security forces.

Also on Sunday, another bus traveling in the West Bank on a road between the settlement of Adam and the Palestinian village of Hizme came under a hail of stones that damaged the windshield of the vehicle.

The bus driver sustained light injuries, reports said.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, a firebomb was hurled at a military position in Hebron. There were no injuries and no damage reported in that incident.

The latest incidents came amid an extended lull in the number of attacks after months of near-daily stabbings, car-rammings, and shootings by Palestinians that claimed the lives of 29 Israelis and four foreign nationals. Some 200 Palestinians have also been killed over the same period, the majority of them while carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers, and the rest during clashes with troops, according to the Israeli army.