Security forces nab Palestinian suspect carrying Israeli police uniform

Israeli security forces on Saturday afternoon thwarted a terror attack when they arrested a Palestinian suspect in possession of an Israel Police uniform, police said in a statement.

The 36-year-old suspect from the West Bank city of Bethlehem was arrested by Border Police officers as he attempted to cross the Jerusalem-area Mishor Adumin checkpoint in a taxi. He was taken into custody for questioning.

Police said the suspect was on his way to carry out a terror attack against Israelis when he was arrested. An intelligence tip-off led authorities to his whereabouts, the statement said.

The would-be attacker was identified as the suspect by the forces patrolling the checkpoint, and was found to be concealing an Israel Police uniform that police said he planned to use in his attack.

“Thanks to precise intelligence, determination and the vigilance of our security forces, we were able to make the arrest before the suspect was able to carry out his plans,” said the commander of the Border Police unit who made the arrest.

The foiled attack is the latest incident in a spate of terror attacks and violence that have included stabbings, car-rammings, shootings and a suicide bombing over the past seven months. The violence has claimed the lives of 29 Israelis and four foreign nationals. Some 200 Palestinians have also been killed for the same period, the majority of then while carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers, and the rest during clashes with troops, according to the Israeli army.

Earlier this month, an ultra-Orthodox man was moderately wounded in a stabbing attack at Lions’ Gate, outside Jerusalem’s Old City. A day later, three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were injured, one seriously, in a car-ramming attack near the West Bank settlement of Dolev. And later that week, a teenage Arab girl was arrested in the Old City in possession of a knife.