Traffic held up over dummy bomb in West Bank bus stop
After cordoning area, sappers conclude suspicious object found near city of Ariel is a fake
Police cordoned off a northern West Bank bus stop near the city of Ariel Friday after a suspected bomb was discovered at the site. Sappers who rushed to the scene, located near the Tapuah Junction, examined the device and concluded that it was a fake.
Police said the device comprised an empty canister attached to a cellphone.
Late last month, a makeshift bomb went off at the same site, in what security officials believed was an attempted terror attack. The explosion caused minor damage to the bus stop, but resulted in no injuries, police said.
The Tapuah Junction, which is located near the Palestinian city of Nablus, has been the site of several terror attacks in the past. Over the past few months, security forces say they have thwarted a number of planned attacks at the site.
Earlier this month, two Palestinians were arrested at the junction after Israeli forces stopped and searched them, and found that they were carrying three pipe bombs and other weapons, raising suspicions that they were planning a terror attack.
In May, Border Police forces at the junction stopped a Palestinian man wearing an explosives vest, in an apparent suicide bombing attempt. Several days later, a Palestinian man was shot dead by Border Police forces near the site after apparently opening fire at them. The man’s family, however, maintained he was innocent and had arrived at a checkpoint near the junction in order to receive a shipment of cellphones for a store he owns.
Last year, Evyatar Borowsky, 32, a father of five from the nearby settlement of Yitzhar, was killed when a Palestinian man at the junction stabbed him multiple times.