Drive-by shooting at maximum-security prison seen as attempt to scare jailers
Officials say third ‘warning’ attack since August part of intimidation campaign against prison officers involved in crackdown against criminal organizations
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In a suspected mob warning, unknown assailants opened fire on the front gate of the Hadarim prison complex northeast of Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning.
No one was hurt and no damage was caused in the shooting, which took place at about 4 a.m.
Prisons Service officials said the shooters were believed to belong to a known criminal organization, several of whose members were serving prison terms in Rimonim Prison, which is part of the Hadarim complex.
The shooting, officials said, was seen as a “warning” to Prisons Service officials who have been clamping down on the activities of criminal organizations inside the prison in recent months.
The crime organization believed to be responsible for the shooting had “crossed all red lines,” officials said Wednesday.
“Our assessment is that this is the work of criminal organizations we are operating against, which have abandoned any restraints they had and are willing to occasionally carry out serious attacks, including shootings toward prison walls and verbal and other threats against officers and jailers in the Prisons Service, in a bid to control them through intimidation.”
Investigators said the shooters fired from a car that had stopped briefly across the street from the gate, then fled when a Prisons Service patrol arrived on the scene.
They are believed to have used a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Investigators collected several dozen 7.62-millimeter bullets from the scene that fit that type of weapon.
The Route 4 highway that passes next to the prison complex near Raanana Junction was closed for an hour after the shooting.
The incident is the third apparent “warning” attack against Prisons Service officials in recent months.
In early October a bomb exploded inside a car belonging to the head of one of the wings of Rimonim Prison while it was parked near her home in Netanya. No one was hurt in the attack, but the car sustained heavy damage.
The officer targeted in the bombing oversees the section of the prison that houses the members of the criminal organization suspected in Wednesday’s shooting.
In August, a stun grenade was thrown against the outer fence of Ma’asiyahu Prison in Ramle.
The Times of Israel Community.