Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent condolences on Saturday night to the families of two IDF soldiers who were killed in a car-ramming attack on Friday.
“We will work to demolish the home of the terrorist and will deal with him to the fullest extent of the law.”
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and two more were seriously injured seriously in the attack which occurred around 4:45 PM on Friday in Northern Samaria. The driver, a 26-year-old Palestinian from the town of Barta’a, was lightly injured and treated at the scene. The attack took place on Route 585 from the settlement of Mevo Dotan towards Hermesh.
According to the IDF, 26-year-old Ala Qabha intentionally ran over the soldiers who were had just gotten out of a jeep and were walking towards a guard post near Mevo Dotan, near the Palestinian city of Jenin.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service stated that Qabha confessed on Saturday to carrying out an attack.
A spokesman for the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva said Saturday morning that there had been no improvement in the status of the two- injured soldiers, whose conditions remained very serious and moderate respectively.
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Qabha’s father insisted that the incident was an accident and not an attack, emphasizing that his son was not affiliated with any terrorist organization.
“This isn’t the first car accident like this and won’t be the last,” Rateb Qabha said to Walla News. “You hear about accidents like these every day in the news.”
“I know my son well,” his father said. “This is a young man who works, he dreams of getting married and having a family. He doesn’t have [terrorist] leanings… I extend my condolences to the families of the victims,” Qabha added.
Qabha was reported to have been recently released from Israeli prison. The father said his son had been jailed “for stone throwing.”
“It doesn’t mean that he should be labeled a terrorist or a criminal,” a family representative told Walla. “The Shin Bet [security service] knows with 100% certainty that he is not a criminal who endangers the state of Israel.”