Cop injured in apparent terror attack wakes up
30-year-old officer was treated overnight for moderate wounds after stabbing next to West Bank settlement of Adam
An Israeli police officer who was stabbed in the back Monday in a suspected Palestinian terror attack regained consciousness Tuesday after doctors removed one of his kidneys at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He was reported to be in stable condition.
Moments after the stabbing, 30-year-old Rami Ravid managed to contact his brother by phone, and asked him to alert his family, Channel 2 News reported.
“Listen, gently notify Mom that I was stabbed in the back. I’m on my way to the hospital,” Ravid can be heard telling his brother in a recording obtained by the news channel.
“I have a knife in my back right now.”
Ravid sustained damage to his kidney in the attack and was rushed to the hospital with the knife still lodged in his back.
At the time of the attack, the officer and his partner were directing traffic at a busy intersection where an accident had taken place.
The attacker fled the scene and police officers were searching the area for him, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Another police spokesman said that Israeli forces opened fire at the suspect before he escaped. According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, the attacker was Palestinian.
Monday’s attack came a day after a bomb exploded on a Bat Yam bus, moments after the driver evacuated the passengers. No one was injured in the incident.
On Tuesday, the Israeli air force launched strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip, in response to a sniper attack earlier that killed an Israeli civilian. According to Palestinian sources in the Strip, two people — a 3-year-old child named Hala Sabiha and her father — were killed during the Israeli strikes, and nine were injured.
The Israeli who was killed, 22-year-old Saleh Abu Latif from the predominantly Bedouin city of Rahat, was working between Nahal Oz and Kfar Aza as a civilian employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry on repairs to a section of the Israel-Gaza border fence damaged in last week’s storm.
According to Israel Radio, the IAF destroyed a Hamas military training facility west of the Khan Yunis refugee camp. The report added that Hamas targets in the Gaza neighborhood of Zaytoun and the Al-Bureij camp were damaged by the IAF as well.
IDF tanks also fired shells at what it said were terror targets in the Gaza neighborhoods of Zaytoun, Shuja’iyya and the al-Bureij refugee camp.
Military sources said that the airstrikes were “limited in scope” and “not ongoing.” Aside from a directive given to farmers to avoid the fields in direct proximity to the border, the IDF Home Front Command issued no further orders to civilians in the area.