Teen arrested over stabbing of policeman in Nahariya
With wounded victim and 16-year-old attacker providing varying accounts, unclear if attack criminal or terrorist
A 16-year-old teen from a village in the Galilee was arrested Friday night on allegations that he stabbed a Border Police officer earlier in the evening in Nahariya.
The youth confessed to the act, but said in his confession that he and the officer had argued before he stabbed him.
In hospital, the Border Police officer whose sustained what have now been classed as light wounds, said that the teen jumped him from behind and stabbed him, an account conflicting with the teen’s version of events.
Police were still examining whether the attack had a criminal or nationalist motivation.
The attacker fled the scene of the assault, close to the city’s central bus station and was apprehended by security forces some two hours after the incident.
Channel 2 television said that the 37-year-old policeman was stabbed twice in the back, and that security forces set up roadblocks in the area before the assailant was caught.
Also Friday, Israel Defense Forces troops surrounded a village in the Hebron region of the West Bank, where a car-ramming attack earlier in the day left six soldiers wounded, a source in Jerusalem said.
The move followed a cabinet decision Thursday night to allow the defense establishment to encircle entire communities in order for searches to be carried out, Army Radio reported.
Israeli security forces also clashed with Palestinian protesters in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Channel 2 reported.
Major disturbances were reported in several areas of the West Bank, with security forces deployed to the sites of the riots. Palestinian reports said that at least 43 protesters were wounded by IDF fire during the clashes.
The Palestinian Red Cross said that in the West Bank, 16 people were wounded by live fire, and another two by rubber bullets, according to Channel 2.
In the Gaza Strip, at least five Palestinians were injured in confrontations with IDF troops, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported. In the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, hundreds of Palestinians took part in a demonstration to demand Israel return the bodies of terrorists that it is still holding.
Earlier Friday, Palestinians protested outside Ofer Prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.