Four Israelis hurt in West Bank car-ramming, 2 seriously
Driver, a 22-year-old Palestinian, killed by security forces at Tapuah Junction after accelerating into bus stop
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJudah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
Four Israelis were wounded, two of them seriously, in a car-ramming terror attack at Tapuah Junction in the West Bank Sunday morning.
A group of Israelis was waiting for a bus at the site. The driver approached the intersection, then accelerated into the waiting crowd, according to witnesses and police.
The wounded were all evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.
The Magen David Adom rescue service confirmed that the victims were all civilians.
The driver, identified by authorities as 22-year-old Sleiman Shahin from Ramallah, was shot and killed by Border Police forces at the junction.
מקורות פלסטינים מדווחים כי המחבל מפיגוע הדריסה בצומת תפוח הוא סלימאן שאהין בן 22 מרמאללה pic.twitter.com/qXd9YNo8C8
— Gal Berger גל ברגר (@galberger) November 8, 2015
“We saw the wounded lying on the sidewalk near the bus stop,” MDA medics Gil Bismuth and Aviel Mamalya, who were among the first on the scene, said in a statement.
“They were fully conscious and suffering from wounds to their extremities. We performed emergency medical care and evacuated them to hospital. The attacker’s car was nearby, with the driver inside, hurt and neutralized,” they said.
The two Israelis who were seriously injured were men in their 20s. They were hospitalized in stable condition.
A woman, also in her 20s, was lightly injured in the attack. She is pregnant.
#BREAKING: #Palestinian ram his car over Israelis in Tapoh Junction: 3 Israelis injured – 1 seriously #Terror pic.twitter.com/pQmBk7JWfW
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) November 8, 2015
A fourth victim, an Israeli woman, was struck by shrapnel from the crash, which lightly wounded her. Initial reports from medical personnel on the scene suggested that her injuries had come from officers’ gunfire, but those were later proven to be false.
Following news of the attack, a group of Jewish extremists in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar began throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles traveling nearby, according to the IDF. Soldiers were at the scene.
The junction, a major intersection on Route 60, was closed to traffic from all directions.
[mappress mapid=”5374″]
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.