IDF blockades hometown of Palestinian who stabbed grocery worker

Security forces on Wednesday placed a cordon around the West Bank town of Yatta, hours after a Palestinian resident stabbed a supermarket worker in a terror attack in a central Israeli town.

All traffic coming in and out of the village was being checked, the IDF said in a statement.

Earlier Israeli troops raided the Yatta home of Ismail Ibrahim Ismail Abu Aram, 19, who was arrested after stabbing and critically wounding an Israeli man, at a supermarket in the city of Yavneh.

Just before noon, Abu Aram attacked a 43-year-old employee of a Shufersal supermarket, stabbing him multiple times in the chest, neck and head. The brutal attack was captured by the store’s security camera (warning: graphic content).

Abu Aram fled the scene but was tackled and pinned to the ground by civilian bystanders until police arrived and arrested him.

The victim was rushed to the nearby Kaplan Medical Center with life threatening injuries, a hospital spokesperson said. He was still in critical condition after a seven-hour surgery, according to Channel 2 News.

In the past two years of increased violence in the West Bank and Israel, several Palestinian terrorists have come from the village of Yatta, notably the two gunmen who carried out the Sarona Market terror attack in June 2016, in which four people were killed and over a dozen wounded.

During the several-month wave of violence starting October 2015, Israeli forces regularly placed cordons around Palestinian towns after attacks, in a measure derided as collective punishment against residents.

According to the Shin Bet security service, Abu Aram entered Israel illegally, without a required permit. He had no history of terror activity and was transferred to the Shin Bet security service for questioning.

Police placed a gag order on other details of the investigation into the stabbing attack.

An IDF spokesperson said the soldiers had not arrested anyone in Yatta, but were “conducting searches” in the house.

She would not elaborate further on what the troops were looking to find.