Reported Lod carjacking was in fact terror attack, Shin Bet says
Security agency alleges stabbing last week was carried out by 19-year-old Palestinian hoping for 'suicide by cop'
The Shin Bet said on Monday that a stabbing in the central Israeli city of Lod last week, in which a Jewish woman was moderately hurt, was in fact a terror attack and not an attempted carjacking, as was initially reported.
The Palestinian suspect, Malek Bassem Ismail Saada, 19, was picked up on Tuesday — the day after the attack — the security service said, but details of the case were not previously revealed to the public.
According to the Shin Bet, Saada carried out the attack “because he was tired of his life” and hoped he would be killed by police.
The Palestinian teenager brought a knife with him to a parking garage in Lod just before 8:30 p.m. on Monday. When he spotted a woman with her hair covered, which identified her as a religious Jewish woman, he ran after her and — shouting a sentence in Arabic — stabbed her in the upper body, the Shin Bet said.
Saada fled the scene, but was arrested as he made his way back to his home in the southern West Bank town of Halhul.
According to the Israel Hayom daily, Saada stole the knife from the bakery in the city where he was employed illegally, as he hid not have a permit to work in Israel.
“This is another case of a Palestinian deciding to carry out a terror attack as a solution to his personal problems,” the Shin Bet said.